More and more businesses are looking to the cloud as a way to reduce costs, increase security and improve their internal IT infrastructure. When considering this change it's important to know what questions to ask and what information to convey to your potential hosting provider in order to make your move to the cloud as seamless and smooth as possible.
Doing a needs analysis is important for finding out if cloud computing is a good fit for your business. Ask yourself, "What am I trying to accomplish?" If you're trying to give multiple office locations access to the same data and software, cloud computing can help you accomplish this. If you're trying to implement a disaster recovery plan to keep your data and files safe, cloud computing can offer that. Although working in the cloud is generally safer and more affordable than running servers and software in-house, you still want to make sure it will provide you with a substantial IT improvement.
The next question to ask yourself is, "What applications do I need to access remotely?" For many businesses, the initial desire is to move their
After you have determined that a provider is capable of hosting your software, add-ons and extensions it's important to know where it's stored and how you will be accessing it. Where are data centers located? How safe and secure is my data? What about on-going service and support? Basically, when you trust a company to manage your IT, you want to know how they do it.
Moving some, or all, of your businesses applications to the cloud is becoming easier and safer every day. They important thing to remember is to ask the right questions and get the right information, and you'll be able to start working anytime, anywhere in the cloud.