“But the business applications required to achieve this are an costly proposal in our ongoing economic climate. This is making it progressively challenging for smaller businesses to contend with large corporations who hold seemingly infinite budgets. But we are now seeing the emergence of multi-tenanted business applications based upon a price-per-user model, or in other words, the Public Cloud. This is allowing youthful organisations to enjoy enterprise level services, security and products, at a fraction of the price.
Now is the time to begin “Thinking Big” – and utilising communications to get there. With Cloud Computing, instead of running Desktops, Applications, Exchange or Voice through physical in-house servers, they are hosted on centralised virtual servers in a data centre. This whole procedure is instant to setup and easy to use; you just login, customise and begin.
Applications are more scalable, more secure and more reliable as you don’t need a copy of an app for every department using it, just one app which is adaptable enough for everyone to customise for their own particular demands.
You can immediately supply applications whenever you need them as the end user directly controls the resources they require. This allows businesses striving to adjust to the pace and dynamism of business today to deploy highly resilient virtual machines for their staff, dawning a new era of flexibility.
Directors are starting to recognise a change in the dynamics of their firms now that staff can be networked more cost-effectively, no matter where in the globe they are. Employees can gain from enhanced mobility with access to their personal desktop user profile from any device – Laptop, Thin Client or iPad – from anywhere in the world within reach of a 3G network. This makes it easy to link up individuals and offices in one cohesive, responsive unit in which users share and synchronise emails, diaries and files. Small companies can employ home-based workers, or open small branch offices, or more effectively connect employees on their mobiles to deliver seamless, customer service as easily as a large corporation. Cloud Computing also furthers staff productivity and innovation by allowing for access to the latest technology without the need for any investment in upgrades so small businesses get first class IT on a global scale without having to spend a penny.
IT executives have raised some concerns about the security of their data in the Cloud. But since all data and applications are centralised in a data centre, it is immensely simpler to enable and enforce processes and procedures to ensure security, privacy and other best practices. No data is stored on a device, so you never have to worry about proprietary data coming into the wrong hands if the device itself is lost, stolen or breaks. This is particularly noteworthy with potentially gigabytes of sensitive corporate data sitting on the desk of every member of staff.