Many organizations have become reliant on cloud computing due to its cost efficiency and accessibility to computing resources. However, complications with data security often arise. One way to gain control and maintain accessibility is to use a private cloud. This article explores why a business might choose a private cloud over more affordable public cloud platforms.
Doing business using the cloud is now commonplace, but every business is different and needs to fit its IT infrastructure to its operational requirements. This is possible, but trying to fit a one-size-fits-all solution into a complicated operational structure will cause more harm than good. In this month’s newsletter, we wanted to give five general tips to consider when you want to deploy the cloud in your business.
For competitive people, hearing the words “can’t win ‘em all” is infuriating. You want to win! These words, however, are completely true. Sometimes in business, you just lose. You may not be able to meet every deadline or win every sale, but there are things you can do to put your business in the best position to meet your goals. Today, we thought we would list a few things having the right technology strategy can do to help your business.
The cloud is a remarkable innovation that businesses of all industries and sizes can utilize to scale growth and operations. How you use the cloud, though, will change depending on your company's specific pain points and requirements. How can you invest in a cloud solution that ticks all your boxes? It starts with assessing whether you want to utilize a public, private, or hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Most businesses who utilize the cloud report that they have managed to cut costs while still getting the resources they need to perform to spec. Businesses can use the cloud for processing and storing data, as well as application deployment, making it a very dynamic solution to a business’ needs. However, you cannot make decisions based on cost alone. Here are some other factors to consider.
The telephone, as a technology, has been around for quite a while, more or less serving businesses for that entire time. Of course, we’ve seen quite a few advancements in telephony over the years, which has helped it to remain a cornerstone of modern business communications to this day in the form of Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP.
Rarely is there a problem that a cloud solution cannot fix, and as such, businesses are more often turning to the cloud to find ways to handle the many challenges presented to them on a daily basis. Is this reliance on the cloud a good thing, or does it hold businesses back? Let’s take a look at what can happen as a result of overreliance on the cloud.
Your business depends on software for many of its day-to-day operations, whether it’s an email system, productivity suite, or other specialized software. When it comes to acquiring software, you have two options: the traditional method of acquisition, i.e. buying it from a vendor, or subscribing to a Software as a Service solution. What are the differences and how can you make sure your organization is getting value out of its investment?
Cloud computing has been touted as one of the most innovative and important technologies for smaller businesses as they look to compete with larger organizations. How it makes this possible is by offering the dynamic computing environments that can help bring these smaller businesses into the information age without saddling them with massive infrastructure costs while doing so. That’s not to say that the cloud is cheap by any means, and this month we will discuss how cloud computing is a great option and how if it isn’t managed properly, it can be problematic for the businesses that rely on it.
When you think of the government, you don’t immediately think of an organization that is at the forefront of innovation. Sure, they have all that money at their disposal, but most of it goes here and there to try to help the people of a constituency; and, frankly it isn’t terribly efficient. What may surprise you is that governments are embracing cloud services and it tends to benefit everyone. Let’s see how governments are taking advantage of cloud computing.
Cloud computing is being used by nearly everyone nowadays, and most of the time it presents a lot of value that can’t be found with purchasing, managing, and maintaining an in-house computing infrastructure. As an organization begins moving more and more of their computing to the cloud, there is a situation that arises that industry professionals call “cloud sprawl”.
You might be familiar with the concept of hosting a service or application in-house on your own server units, and if you are, you know all about the struggles that come along with doing so. But what if we told you that you can get the same benefits of hosting your own applications and IT systems without the need for any of the bulky equipment taking up space in your office? Yes, that’s right—you too can host your business applications, even if you do not have the space to do so, and it’s all thanks to the cloud.
The cloud is a great tool to improve the accessibility of applications and data, but with so many options available to businesses, it can be a bit intimidating to get started with it. Let’s go over some of the various types of cloud solutions available, as well as some of the more well-known services that you might find helpful.
When we talk about the cloud, what springs to your mind? The cloud might sound like a business buzzword, but in reality it’s one of the most important components of a technology infrastructure, especially in today’s online environment. Considering the ongoing pandemic and unpredictability that the situation brings, you don’t want to wait any longer; you should have started thinking about implementing the cloud yesterday.
Cloud computing has been one of the most utilized tools for business in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has made it crucial for businesses to give remote access to tools and one effective way to make that happen was to look to the cloud. This has expanded an already booming market and presents businesses of all sizes with the opportunity to get the computing they need without huge upfront costs. Today, we’ll take a look at the cloud computing market and how you can leverage hosted computing solutions to improve your business.
Businesses have many problems they need to solve. With technology, the process typically starts with identifying a problem, researching solutions, and finding one that will successfully work to solve the problem. Traditionally, when dealing with technology, a company would procure the hardware and hire technicians to implement the solution and deploy the services needed. If they had to borrow money to do it, they would because the profits would presumably be more than the payments even with banks tacking on interest.
A lot is made about cloud computing and its cost and time saving benefits, but when your business is small, a lot of times, it could just be looked at as an unnecessary addition to your computing infrastructure. Today, we thought we would go through a few ways that even the smallest of businesses can utilize cloud computing.
The cloud has proven to be an extremely useful tool for modern businesses. Not only does it provide anywhere-anytime access to applications, processing, storage, and more, it also delivers those products as a service, allowing an organization--or an individual--to budget for recurring costs rather than major upfront ones. This provides your organization with functional, supported, and secure computing environments that eliminate a lot of the support costs that traditional computing environments require. It sounds like a perfect scenario for small and large businesses alike, but things aren’t always what they seem, as a lot of cloud users have found that they have incurred several hidden costs by using cloud platforms. Today, we take a look at these hidden costs.
A short time ago, cloud computing was a resource that was only taken advantage of by organizations that could afford to virtualize and manage their hosted platforms. Nowadays, many businesses, including startups, are using cloud computing for their organization’s primary computing functions. As this enormous shift happened, many of the world’s largest companies have pushed their cloud platforms forward to offer secure storage, software deployment, and even communications for organizations that are either just starting out, or are looking to reduce their capital computing and support costs.
Ever the innovators, many of the Internet’s giants have begun introducing new cloud pricing models that actually charges customers by the amount of computing they use, rather than relying on service agreements that bind them to a certain service plan. While this shift is only currently being undertaken by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and a handful of the other large software developers in the world, it is easy to see how it can be a much more sustainable system than the service offerings that are offered today.
Providers: Maximize Profits with Advanced Usage Tracking
For cloud providers, the boom in cloud computing took a fair amount of time to happen. Platforms like Salesforce utilized cloud computing by giving customers access to all of the software through a relatively simple-to-use web interface. Amazon Web Services (A.W.S.) took it to the next level a couple of years later when they developed and deployed a set of services through their web-based interface. These services, such as, data storage, computation, and support, provided organizations the computing resources they need at a price point that made sense for their bottom line. The access from anywhere was the biggest selling point, and allowed early commercial cloud platforms to find success.
A few years later these service packages started to pop up everywhere. You had data storage, infrastructure, development platforms, software; basically any type of computation you needed for your business, available by entering a service agreement with the vendor of your choice. As many more companies begin to offer cloud computing packages, the larger corporations that have long-been offering these technologies begun to look at how to get the highest profitability out of their cloud platforms. Of course, raising their prices could work, but may be counter productive with the immense supply of cloud providers now available.
Instead of increasing the price and risking losing customers, A.W.S., Microsoft, and Google are all going to a “serverless” cloud computing pricing model. This means that instead of paying for a service package for your organization, you will pay for how much you actually use the platform. It is basically a toll-based system. For every million times code is run, the customer is charged a certain amount, say a penny. The amount of math at play here is staggering, but how do you think this pricing model stacks up against current cloud service prices?
Consumers: Actually Pay For the Cloud YOU Use
Consider for a minute that there are multi-million individual “transactions” made daily by the users of an organization. Every time a customer runs code, it is thought of as a transaction. If you have the sophistication to track this information over networks, you can set up a truly fair pricing model. Organizations that use more computing will pay more, while organizations that use less will pay less. By implementing this demand-latent manner in which to collect fees, these extraordinarily large companies will inevitably take over a larger share of the cloud industry. Demand for cheaper computing, no service contracts, and reliable support is more pressing today than it has ever been.
This innovative way to push the limits of this technology forward isn't without its naysayers; and, in this case, there are sure to be many. Not much has been made about this shift in pricing, as not many platforms have implemented it. As these analytics systems become more proficient, however, you will likely see cloud providers that simply cannot compete with this pricing platform. By offering their own modified system, one that will allow them to take advantage of the price trend without gouging their loyal customers for more money, companies may yet hang on to their market share.
Cloud growth has been substantial and changed the way people think about the acquisition of computing resources. With the new pricing model that the big providers have, it’s clear that the next innovation for cloud computing is to implement a true pay-as-you-go system. To learn more about the latest cloud computing innovations, or how to leverage hosted computing for your business, call us today at (732) 291-5938.
Every business owner needs to understand the pivotal role that technology plays in their business’s growth. However, many companies just aren’t able to keep up with the latest trends and developments. When this happens, they miss out on important opportunities to grow, and when an organization falls behind the times, they fall out of practice. When they fall out of practice… well, you get the idea.
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