Unless you’ve had your head in the sand the past year, you’ve probably heard of cloud computing — and like most business owners or managers, you’re either looking up at the sky for answers or simply choosing to ignore it.
Even if cloud computing seems confusing and/or daunting, don’t ignore it, says Mark Swanson, the CEO of Telovations Inc.
“It is vitally important to not only understand what cloud computing is, but also to tap into its far-reaching and strategic ‘hidden’ benefits,” says Swanson.
Smart Business spoke with Swanson about cloud computing and how a business can be — and should be — benefiting from it.
What exactly is cloud computing?
The term ‘cloud computing’ refers to a computing paradigm that has been around for more than 10 years. Still, communication disjoints and confusion over the term ‘cloud’ is almost certainly getting in the way of its acceptance, by making it more difficult to understand what it means for your business.
Generally, ‘cloud’ means three things:
- Its flexible/scalable/virtual applications infrastructure is available on-demand.
- It’s pay as you go — you only pay for resources used in a shared environment.
- There’s no ongoing obligation.
What are the benefits of cloud computing?
Take hosted e-mail, for example. Most users don’t have their own servers; they rent their mailboxes from Google, AOL or some other provider. The benefits of not running an e-mail server yourself are obvious: you don’t have to spend the time to do it, you don’t have to add more capacity and you can add mailboxes on demand. An added bonus is the fact that these firms all have redundant infrastructures that keep your system up and running no matter what ‘disaster’ occurs.
However, despite all the obvious benefits, it is easy to create a business case that does not justify moving to the cloud. The common excuses I hear are: ‘My applications are unique.’ ‘The cloud is not secure.’ ‘I have too much of an investment in my people.’ — or, my favorite, ‘I have to see my server!’
What are the consequences of ignoring cloud computing?
There are ramifications to this new computing paradigm that go beyond the obvious. Choosing to not adopt a new technology has strategic implications to your business that you should not ignore. For example, the American automobile industry failed to adopt factory automation and ‘Just-in-Time’ inventory systems and fell behind Japanese manufacturers in the 1980s. If you choose to ignore cloud computing technology today, your business could suffer the same fate while your competitors soar ahead.
