Cloud for SME's

Cloud computing has been a buzzword in business for many, many years and has proven to be an essential tool to reduce data warehousing and IT costs. For SMEs, cloud can help reduce IT costs and is of particular interest for SMEs who cannot afford to have an IT team on call or on-site 24 hours a day.

The absence of a hardware component and the shared nature of numerous other resources mean that the cloud is an economical hosting option. Unlike buying hardware with set specifications, cloud offers flexible capacity based buying options that allow the company to pay only for what they need, making it ideal for small to medium businesses.

Small and Medium enterprises can utilize cloud infrastructure services without spending much on capital expenditures (CAPEX). As cloud providers offer options for scalability, SMEs do not have to worry about extensive infrastructure upgrades in the future. Using cloud, SMEs can grow faster as new infrastructure can be deployed quickly. Using cloud technology, they can step into new markets using virtualized cloud platforms. A 2013 European Commission report revealed that organizations adopting cloud could reduce their costs by about 10 - 20%.

In essence, cloud computing can prove commercially viable for many SMEs due to its flexibility and pay-as-you-go cost structure. This makes SMEs nimble, quick and agile, and enables them to conduct business faster and better.

It's important for organizations to evaluate both private and public cloud and see which platform best meets their business requirements. Essentially, there is no “one solution fits all” when it comes to determining to use public or private cloud service and it's important to carefully evaluate both the options available. Based on this, an organization can choose the cloud service that best suits them.

The following factors can be kept in mind while evaluating which option is right for your business:

With Hosted Private Cloud, companies can benefit from a virtual data centre with a service provider and can also customize the private cloud as per their requirement. This gives companies a sense of greater control over their IT environment. Heavily regulated industries with high availability environments such as healthcare, banks and financial institutions, and governments might want to opt for a Hosted Private cloud for higher security. SLAs with the service provider help in determining the degree of security and accessibility.

A public cloud service is popular with organizations looking to cut IT costs. These organizations are concerned about security but scalability, efficiency, and affordability are the most important features.

Smaller businesses and startups usually prefer the pay-as-you-go flexibility that public cloud service offers and the cost savings associated with it. Both private and public cloud options offer scalability so businesses can scale according to the needs that they have.

A private cloud service would likely be chosen when organizations feel they need greater control of their business-critical data and applications. A private cloud service is popular with highly regulated industries such as financial institutions as they are more comfortable having their data hosted privately and physically separated from other businesses.

1. Evaluate the credibility of the service provider
2. Ensure the Service Provider follows international best practices for Service management and Information Security Management
3. Check the Service provider has good customer references
4. Ensure it provides a guaranteed level of services offering high-end SLA's
5. Conduct a Site Visit and due diligence of Service Providers IT infrastructure
6. Ensure the Service Provider meets the specific needs of the nature and size of your company
7. Service Provider offers 24/7/365 support - ability to reach them during non-working hours