Cloud Computing is a Potential Game-Changer for SMEs
July 3rd, 2012 by BrightCloud
Cloud computing is evolving and becoming less expensive and more diverse but principally it allows you to do things more quickly without having specialist skills in house. And it costs you less.
Cloud computing offers several tiers of service, ranging from Software as a Service (SaaS), which requires the least in-house infrastructure, to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS), which require more IT expertise.
The quality of investment made by BrightCloud into a well managed and scalable infrastructure is enormous, this then offers tremendous benefits to an SME business looking to add competence and reliance or save costs from their IT budget. The idea of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) will be tempting to some, while the need to lock down security will be essential to all.
“Businesses that feel they need to consider Cloud Services need to engage with someone that can help them to plan the benefits and rewards, but somewhat ironically even website hosting is now calling itself cloud computing and so most business are actually already using cloud.”
Duncan Little, BrightCloud Managing Director
However, organisations need to think carefully about their business needs and assess the solutions available, before moving to the cloud. People in SMEs are quite used to choosing an accountant, lawyers and products. It’s a question of understanding who is around, choosing them and making sure the price is right. The need for a cloud computing service MUST be driven by the needs and budgets that the business has. Many BrightCloud customers use only a few of the services such as Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), but as a need is identified such as hardware refresh or office move, then actually migrating more applications into the Cloud does become much more attractive.
“Over next few years all our clients will need to develop a strategy to include cloud. The cloud allows businesses to upgrade processes to be more agile. IT moves from service builder to service manager.”
Look Before you Leap
But for cloud computing to succeed and grow IT professionals must understand business processes and be prepared to deliver new IT capabilities to the business on short demand. Cloud can provide you with great benefits, but you need to understand both the benefits and the pitfalls before you dive in. In spite of all the hype in the industry around cloud computing, UK IT decision-makers are not prepared to put applications in the cloud.
The UK is Falling Behind
A new study conducted by Alcatel-Lucent reported that the UK is falling behind leading countries in cloud adoption. The study was run by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates and was conducted using online interviews among 3,886 information technology decision makers (ITDMs) in the United States, United Kingdom, France, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.
The report found that India is already the leader in external cloud and expects to expand its cloud use even further, while the UK will drop behind, with the least growth in cloud adoption over the next three years. In those businesses using cloud services, IT decision-makers in the UK were the most reluctant adopters (48%). Just 22% of UK IT decision-makers said they would move mission-critical applications into the cloud. This compares with 39% of US IT decision-makers and 40% of IT decision-makers in France. The UK and France had the lowest percentage of those that “strongly agree” to both the pro and anti-cloud statements. This, along with the low satisfaction rates of cloud computing, shows the malaise towards cloud, according to Alcatel-Lucent.
“Business people in the UK are much more sceptical of industry hype than in the USA and generally know when they are being sold something that isn’t quite what it pretends to be. But that doesn’t mean that all cloud is hype, start a discussion with us focused on your business needs and not on Cloud and see where it goes.”
Duncan Little, BrightCloud Managing Director
