The worst example that I ever come across in a large cooperation of a business’s operations being vulnerable to poor IT use was a customer management database installed in a PC under a desk in a call centre.

It was someone’s pet project that might have been useful but became embedded into the day-to-day operations leaving the organisation commercially exposed.

While frustration with IT facilities might lead to this “self-help” approach the use of cloud might have prevented this situation.

So What is “Cloud”?

This splits into three categories

• Infrastructure as a Service
• Platform as a Service
• Software as a Service

They all have their own place and will take some understanding, but the common denominator is “As A Service”. A company buys a service not infrastructure and software.

Contrast this to a model that installed computing facilities in a data room with intelligent terminals that run business applications but access software for the companies back office IT operations.

This model is characterised by on premises equipment, purchase of propriety software that is installed by the vendor and to some extent a fixed location for the user.

Cloud computing breaks this model by providing computing services on demand where the user pays a charge for access while the physical equipment could be anywhere. The model is characterised by the limited need for equipment, charging via a regular payment and access from anywhere that there is an internet connection.

Popular examples that use this model are Drop Box, Google Drive, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

The idea of distributed computing has been around for a long time the cloud applications above commercialise it.

Why would you use it?

A Move to cloud computing by large corporations is often hampered by an entrenched computing estate with mission critical software running on out of date equipment and software.

Adoption by Small and Medium sized businesses though can be easier and offers them the opportunity to operate and compete with larger organisations. Smaller businesses might be underinvested in IT but are less likely to have a large IT estate.

The use of cloud computing offers them the chance to compete with larger organisations and to focus on their unique offering and “outsource” the IT. Small companies that run a service do not what to spend overhead and time on running IT, they need to be laser focused on serving their customers.

What would you use it For

All businesses need to have office software available. Financial Accounts, Office Software, Customer Management Software and Sales Processes to name a few. The main advantage of cloud computing for a Small Business is that the hardware and software needed for these are not your problem anymore!

Cloud computing allows a small busines many advantages

• Flexibility – You can access the company systems securely anywhere you can connect to the internet on any device.
• Remote Working – The company systems won’t jam up if everyone in the company is using the same software.
• Data Security – Is likely to be much better than the regular small business office that anyone can break into and remove a desktop.
• Software and Hardware Updates – You will always have access to the latest hardware and software without any further expense and effort, it’s just there.
• Subscription Based Charging –A different charging model and will give the business visibility of operating cost.
• Collaboration – Many people can work on the same projects and documents at the same time.
• Back-up and Recovery – Lose your company data and you lose your business. Economies of scale mean that a cloud provider will likely have the means to restore customer data in the event of a hardware or software failure.

While they have the financial muscle the disruption that Large companies struggle with when implementing cloud technology will not go away. The exiting estate will have grown organically and it will need to be streamlined to be able to migrate.

Small companies are not likely to have these barriers and can make a quick move to the cloud. Indeed, this might well allow them to expand their customer base much faster and provide remote services to their customers.