Cloud Computing for the SMB

Technology is a requirement in today’s business world

Every business, regardless of it’s size, needs the basics of a web site, email and a place to store your documents and files. As your business grows, not only will you need to scale your computing resources to support the basic IT services, but you will also need to add in other applications such as Enterprise Resource Planning, Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence and Reporting.

Building out an IT infrastructure to support your business is not an easy task. The sunken costs of creating even a small data center to support your basic IT needs can be considerable, especially if you want to make sure that your web site and email server do not go down unexpectedly or if you need reliable backups for your file server.

Costs of your own Data Center

When building out your own data center, keep in mind the following costs:

1. Initial installation and configuration costs This is the actual hardware you will need to purchase or lease and includes cabling, servers, networking equipment, data storage and uninterruptible power supply. You need to account for the labor involved in running the cables, racking the servers and testing for disaster recovery.
2. On going costs of maintaining your IT assets
1. Electricity required to power and cool your servers
2. Staffing costs to monitor and maintain your IT investments which includes fighting the battle against spam and viruses
3. Upgrades to hardware as your computing needs grow
4. Software and firmware patches which need to be tested, certified and installed on your servers
5. Maintenance fees that both hardware and software vendors require. These typically run between 5%-15% of the actual purchase price

Alternative to your own Data Center

Cloud Computing offers a compelling alternative to building out your own data center. Instead of purchasing and maintaining your own hardware and software, you “rent” those resources as a service. The costing model is very similar to paying your electricity bill: it is based on the amount of resources consumed. As your business grows, your IT computing power will also grow.

Contact us for a free customized assessment on how Cloud Computing can help your business

      Building your own data center

               Cloud Computing