Offices should be in the cloud

Just what is the channel waiting for when customer fears are so misplaced, asks Aidan Simister

Although it is now accepted that cloud computing has had a transformational effect on so many businesses and in many markets, a large number of organisations still appear to be too afraid to adopt it.

I have seen myriad flimsy barriers placed in the path of a cloud computing migration over the past few months. These include the notion that it poses an increased security risk, and the prospect of losing control. Some businesses have always had one or more in-house IT person and simply cannot see life continuing without them.

Many of these points have been put together and trotted out regularly by traditional tin vendors. After dismissing cloud at its inception, some OEMs and vendors have missed out on its benefits and are now desperately trying to play catch-up.

Some of them are unwitting cloud adopters.

I like to sit back and soak up these conversations, before asking if they have tried cloud before. The answer will inevitably be no, but often without realising it, many companies are already using the cloud for very important business functions.

If the cloud is so dangerous, why are they using Salesforce.com? It's a cloud-based CRM system. And why are they putting financial information into Sage, which is all saved in the cloud?

A good in-house IT employee comes with a cost - not just his or her wages, but also the training, the tools he or she needs to do the job, the in-house IT infrastructure and server room where he or she must work. And then there's the technology required to protect the servers from external breaches.

Not only does all this cost money, it will also take up physical office space at a time when that resource has become more costly than ever. Many mid-market businesses will simply not be able to afford it these days.

With an office-in-the-cloud provider, a business's data can be stored in an air-cooled, purpose-built and secure UK datacentre. With a traditional in-house system, if the customer office burns down, what do you do? How about if somebody tries to break in - does your customer have a secure place for it, or is all that business-critical equipment just sitting in a back room?

And what if an employee leaves the organisation, taking all the business's login details and passwords along for the ride? It can take a long time to change passwords and cancel inactive logins, and sometimes that never happens, leaving the organisation exposed.

With an office-in-the-cloud system, the business and channel partner can stay firmly in control and have passwords and logins rapidly reassigned with just a few clicks.

Stick to your strengths. I see businesses of all sizes scaling up their in-house IT resources to cope with an ever-growing demand to serve more users as well as manage on-premise systems.

But if a business does not deliver IT as your core business function, management should be considering the technologies that are available to help them become more productive. They should concentrate on what they are good at, and spend less time and resource on being an IT enabler.

Once it is understood that these fears are misplaced, the customer business can be free to move forward as a more agile operation. Of course it must be lean, to survive as a modern business, and running an office in the cloud means that if they need to open an office on the other side of the world tomorrow, so long as an internet connection is available, they will be able to.

You can't do that with traditional server room technology, no matter who you are.

Aidan Simister is director of UK sales at Intermedia