We get asked about these three very important factors which are critical to the success of small businesses as they consider to move their IT services over to Cloud Computing:
No1. Seamless migration: I cant have loss of service. We don’t have the skills in house to migrate. Who will do that?
No2. Business class security and control: How secure is my data and how much control over it do we have?
No3. Exceptional expert support: What happens if I have an issue?
Migration to Cloud Computing
When considering a cloud service the next stage is selecting a cloud services provider and one that can handle the migration of your data for you is critical to your migration success. The cloud relies on the ability of a chosen service provider to move your data from your current on site environment to the cloud.
A good cloud services provider should have experts who specialise in the process, plus a select few may offer these services for free. (Like us!) We know that you cant afford to have any issues with this aspect of the service so make sure you carefully choose a provider that specialises in migration (We do!)
Security of Cloud Computing
The most asked question…Security is generally the main area for concern when it comes to making a decision around moving to a Cloud based solution for our SME/SMB customers and rightly so.
A Cloud Service Provider should have invested a lot of time and money into the security of the Cloud platform including the technology within the secure data centres and the processes in which it follows.
SME/SMB’s cannot afford to leave their data on vulnerable locally managed systems. Just think how important it is that you back up the onsite PC and Outlook files and folders. This is your business after all! What happens to your business if a hard drive crashes, or something is spilled on a laptop or PC? Then sonsider if a smartphone or laptop is stolen?
How do you recover that data?
Data loss within your business can happen at anytime. The management of PC’s and Outlook backup files and folders on-premise is complex . Businesses should look for a company that offer a solution which is accessible, reliable and can recover any losses rapidly with minimum disruption for staff.
Support of Cloud Computing
Once you have started using a cloud service, the support you receive is just as important as the security and the migration, remember, this is where you find out how responsive a company is to deal with any questions or concerns you have about their service.
In the business world exceptional support, experts and rapid responses are expected. (We offer a 2 hour SLA while the industry is 4)
The bottom line is a Cloud services provider should assist rapidly to solve any issues you encounter.
To summarise the above when considering Cloud Computing as an option to on premise solution…
Ask about how a migration will be done and how long it will take plus any potential pitfalls to be aware of in advance
Ask where your data is kept. In the UK or elswhere?
How secure is the data centre in which your data is stored?
What level of support and response times does a provider offer?
Where is the support team located?
This isn’t in the list but well worth asking and knowing….
If the data centre or equipment fails, what happens and will you still be able to use the service.
We offer triple resilience in 3 separate UK data centres which basically means that should a data-centre go offline or be flooded etc. you wouldn’t be effected and would experience no loss of service. In addition to the data centres, each piece of hardware within them has auto fail over so should a piece of hardware fail it automatically trips to the next one.
