The forecast is clear: The cloud is here and growing

The world of computing is going through a paradigm shift. We are moving from housing information on local computers or servers and now using the cloud to access our data and run applications.

A similar shift occurred in the world of electricity. In the early days of electricity, factories had their own generators to produce dependable power. Over time, the electric grid and the power plants connected to them became stable enough to supply all of the electricity to the factory. This was a far more efficient way to utilize this resource.

Technically, cloud computing is any service offering where the application and data is stored off site on a remote server. It results in an efficient use of computing resources because many users can utilize the same resource. These services are described as Software as a Service (SaaS) and have a monthly or annual fee based on the number of users, amount of data or extensions.

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Often, it’s thought that the cloud is new. Not the case. We’ve been engaging in the “cloud” since the advent of the Internet. The main change is that more services are running on servers not hosted in the business office.

What does this mean for the average business? That depends. As more services have moved to the cloud, it’s become more important always to be able to access the Internet no matter what. If an Internet connection goes down to an office, it is at a standstill. Therefore, it’s important to consider having a backup Internet Service Provider (ISP). This also means a business needs a stronger network infrastructure to ensure the highest stability.

Here are some common technology tools in business and their current states in relation to the “cloud”:

Email: At this point, if your business is not on the cloud for email, do it. The cost of hosting email in-house is massive. Between hardware, licensing and ongoing support, the total cost of ownership of in-house mail servers is astronomical compared to hosting on the cloud. The cloud also offers real-time updates to features without a disruptive update of the hosting system.

Business applications: With this one, it depends. When a business application such as Quickbooks is hosted on a local network, the speeds are better and backups are easy to manage. Remote access to the application becomes more complex as it’s necessary to create some kind of VPN access to the local network. Most business applications such as Customer Relationship Management systems already have created offerings that can be accessed through a web browser. If you’ve got the option, then go for it. It allows far greater flexibility for remote workers and lower licensing costs.

File shares: Every business has files to create and share between a team or to clients. If your business utilizes mostly Office files such as Word docs or Excel spreadsheets, then the cloud is a great option for increased collaboration features and mobility. For engineering and design firms, this is not as practical. The backbone of the Internet is not yet fast enough to have solid performance for the creation and manipulation of large files from programs such as Photoshop. A local file share is going to be the best answer for large data sets or archives of a company’s data. Consider a Network Attached Storage device.

Phones: In the past, in order to have features such as call trees or voicemail to email, a business needed to invest in an in-house phone system. At this point, the best answer for telephone service is monthly cloud-based phone systems. Most of these systems are compatible with basic VOIP phones made by companies such as Cisco, Polycom and Yealink. In addition, the services rarely have contracts, so that leaves plenty of flexibility for the business to move to another service that has better pricing, greater features or faster tech support. If it’s time to replace your phone system, get on the cloud.

As with anything IT-related, consult with a local IT professional about your specific situation. There may be compliance requirements in your industry to be considered in relation to these systems. If you can, get on the cloud.

Shaun Oshman is founder and chief executive of iSupportU in Boulder. He can be reached at 303-630-9974 or shaun@isupportu.biz.