We've been talking to a lot of customers lately that are confused about the cloud and how it might fit into their business. Here are a few quick hits on cloud services.
At the base level, the public cloud is just a generic term for servers and storage accessed via the internet. Take, for example, the server you might have at your office; this appliance is probably a rack-mounted Dell computer in a closet or something similar that runs your QuickBooks application and maybe a file server. Groups like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have figured out a way to provide economies of scale to this process.
When you take the cost of hundreds of thousands of server appliances and thousands of terabytes of bandwidth and spread that out across millions of customers, you can create some serious business cases for cost savings and new features.
"Now, that cool and all, but what can this do for my business?"
Whoa, easy partner, it's not safe to skip the foreplay and the answer depends on what your business does and what it might need. Generally though, here are 3 big benefits we see by going to a cloud environment.
Cost Savings
Throwing it back to the economies of scale we mentioned earlier. Your business can often find some serious dollars in the budget after moving to the cloud.
Security
The public in public cloud sometimes leads people to think that it's not secure. Not the case, Jack. It's often much tougher for threat actors to infiltrate your cloud-hosted workload than it is to get to that server in your broom closet.
Flexibility
The cloud allows your people to access these applications and storage files without needing to be connected to your WAN or company network. This allows your people to access the stuff they need to do their jobs from anywhere on their laptops, iPads, or even their phones.
Now listen to me and listen good. There are pros and cons to both options (cloud or on-prem [i.e. server in your broom closet]). The real key is finding a managed services provider that you trust to help you make the decision and do the implementation.
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S1 Technology is a Managed Service Provider (MSP) that provides a security-first approach to a full range of managed IT services and support for small to mid-sized businesses.