What cloud strategy is right for your business?
Probably no term has ever been more misused as the 'cloud' when it comes to business technology. Just about every vendor has some sort of cloud offering. You can't blame them after all, the economies of scale presented by the cloud are hard to ignore. That said, how does that translate into real world benefits for YOU and YOUR business? Where do u begin? How do you determine what to move to the cloud, when and how to do it?
One idea is to break it down by type of challenges/opportunities. Some will be immediate, others short to mid term while others are way off in the future.
IMMEDIATE CHALLENGES
Day to day business activities and processes fall into this category. Do you make heavy use of office suites (i.e. Microsoft Office, Open office) ? Still using a free email service (i.e. 'yourbiz@gmail.com')? Are your servers, PCs, laptops reaching their limits? Can you, or do you want, access to your files from anywhere?
SHORT TERM OR MID TERM CHALLENGES
These concerns relate to things like security, business continuity planning (what happens in case of disaster? What if you have to evacuate your premises? What is the plan when you get hit with ransomware, malware, phishing? How do you plan to recover from a disgruntled employee that decides to delete key data for example.
LONG TERM
These challenges may arguably more pleasant to think about then the last two. Things like growth, scalability (can you present systems/processes be simply expanded as you grow), best of class, can you support multiple locations?
In conclusion, the cloud can be a confusing landscape but it doesn't have to be. The goal of this article was not to suggest one tool or another but rather to get you on the path to choosing the right solution.