Wednesday, 29 October 2014

Cloud Solutions for Small Business: Pros and Cons

Cloud Solutions for Small Business: Pros and Cons
Cloud computing services have proven a boon to enterprises and small companies for which it hits an extremely sweet spot. With cloud solutions small companies reap the advantages of not have to establish physical infrastructure including storage systems, e-mail servers, etc. Moreover the «anytime, anywhere» presence of these services means hassle-free interaction and cooperation among company employees and partners. 

Cloud Computing Benefits
With cloud-based services small companies can considerably curtail their computing costs. Storing data on a reliable, secure, cloud-based service eliminates backup worries as you can always access it. Generally, cloud services are easy to use and require only computer or mobile device and Internet connection. 
Cloud solutions make it much easier to interact with partners and colleagues in distant locations, and it`s another oft-cited benefit associated with cloud. All the benefits combined enable small companies to be more collaborative and to stay competitive bringing their products to market much faster, as they can reap the benefits of the infrastructure that only large enterprises used to have. 

Cloud Services Pitfalls 
In spite of its benefits cloud computing solutions still raise concerns over data security and stability as well as efficient managing disparate cloud services. Let`s also not miss that cloud services are exposed to outages which can be beyond a company`s control. There are a number of downtime stories associated with it which serve as a sobering reminder that when you trust your technology services and data to an off-site-third party you place your business at the mercy of the latter`s uptime reliability. Many companies are countering that total dependency by adopting hybrid cloud solutions. 
Examples of security breaches in cloud computing are easy to find, but let`s not forget that any computing environment is associated with certain amount of risk. Hackers may access your files stored on your hard drives and company servers. Unencrypted data stored on notebooks may be seized by third party when the devices go missing. Cloud computing security issues can be compared with airplane disasters. Every day billions of transactions are carried out via cloud computing without any problems, but when something goes wrong people immediately hear about it. 
  • Among other commonly cited concerns over cloud computing services you can find the following:
  • Privacy: How might the data cloud companies collect about you be used?
  • Availability: Is it possible that cloud service go down suddenly leaving you unable to access essential e-mail, customer records or other data?
  • Data mobility: Is it possible to share files between various cloud services? Can you get all your data back when moving to another service and be sure that the data will be destroyed and won`t used for other purposes?



Before adopting cloud or hosted VoIP provider services weigh the pros and cons, and consider more than one service. Most of them offer free-trial period within which you can figure out whether the interface is user-friendly and what security options you get.

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