How Small Businesses Can Benefit from the Cloud

Let's be honest, there is no shortage of adverts of who can offer hosting location space, set up a number of virtualised servers in a building, offload your storage back up or give you some point solutions like email systems you have never heard of. That's tow a penny out there.

That's all very well but is it really helpful to an SMB company looking at the array of IT things that it has, not just servers and storage, but infrastructure, networking, end points, printers etc. How do they really take their entire IT requirements as a whole and get some benefits out of the true scalability of the Cloud without hassle and from experienced businesses? The biggest issue is that lots of companies have parts of the solution which often requires change and upheaval, few have a total, single answer and can then charge your entire IT management as a single monthly charge. If you are a large sized company you might buy an HP Cloud Matrix system for a low end of £120k but that's no SMB solution while other companies look to outsource your IT and that's no good to an SMB either.

independenceIT hailing from the US are one such company that can really help revolutionise your IT and embrace the true scalability advantages and cost efficiencies in the Cloud for all your IT, as it stands today. And it's that last statement which is vital - all your IT including servers, storage, infrastructure, devices such as printers, desktops, laptops and smartphones - all of it gaining the advantages of the Cloud. And all your applications too. Today.

The crucial difference here is what companies like independenceIT offer is to take your applications into the Cloud. This is not selling 'Capacity on demand' which is the focus of just about every Cloud company today or managing point solutions but it is 'Capability on demand' - allowing SMBs to properly scale their organisation in a truly logical and manageable way both from an IT and cost sense.

Take a company with say has less than 100 PCs and laptops, some smartphones, running MS Exchange and OMS Office applications, some CRM and accounting, maybe with some other applications, printers and networking. independence IT manages the whole lot into the Cloud, easily and smoothly, and then returns the capability back in the form of a single charge per desktop per month. Supporting over 300 business applications in its portfolio, independenceIT has experience of running all business grade applications and can help you now.

Imagine having the benefits of a large company IT outsourcing in the Cloud for a single charge per desktop per month of around $100 for your whole IT requirements now and in the future.

That's the power of the Cloud to the SMB and independenceIT brings that scalable power of 'Capability on demand' to SMBs today. For more information call me on +44(0) 207 193 2356.

And resellers, distributors, Telco and Service Providers are are welcome too.

Cloud - Capability on Demand

A recent article caught my eye where a company called Doyenz asserted that in 2012 there would be a slowdown in the need for Cloud storage, i.e. the need to keep piling more data in the Cloud.

In some respects they are right as they also predict that the Cloud will become more about applications on demand rather than data. This echoes and an article I wrote a while back about the concept of of 'Capability on demand' rather than 'Capacity on demand' as a driver for the Cloud. But applications generate data so let's not get too hasty.

I am working with a company called independenceIT who have exactly this view of the Cloud. It's really of no great use just putting data into the Cloud on places like Dropbox, although such sites serve a good purpose in the short term. What companies will really want out of the Cloud is a solution that takes their infrastructure, resources and applications off their hands and then serves them back as a completely managed and automated solution for which they pay a fixed monthly fee per desktop.

This flips the whole hosting industry on its head so that companies can get true economies of scale rather than just places to plant their data and get only the advantages of capacity on demand.

If anyone would like to know more about independenceIT and truly be able to outsource their entire IT resources including applications and leverage the Cloud to its fullest extent either as channel company offering the solution to its customers or as an end user seeking the efficiencies of the Cloud, just drop me a line or call.

Calx Europe is a Business Acceleration company specialising in working with Cloud software or service providers to develop and implement go to market plans in Europe. Please call +44 (0) 207 193 2356 for more information.