A growing number of business networks are "moving to the cloud". They are ditching their internal servers and utilizing virtual databases. This makes many business owners wonder which is better?

This depends greatly on a number of different factors. Each of these can be altered, some more easily than others, if cloud is the right solution for your business:

In order to consider the cloud as a possibility your business needs to have a dependable internet connection with a high enough bandwidth for your needs (which varies, as below). If it isn't we would need to bring to you the options for your geographic area to bring them up to par.

Most standard or common business software can operate in cloud-based systems. But it may be another story when it comes to any industry-specific software your business uses. More and more of these are coming along - but some software will still not run well or will not run at all over the cloud. We have to confirm that all of your software will run well over the cloud. If it does not then we can sometimes offer alternatives to your software that will work well over the cloud.

Some businesses still refuse to use anything cloud based because of their concerns about security. While there are additional security risks when using anything cloud based, they can be minimal if you chose cloud providers carefully and implement properly. This is an area where you need an IT service company with a strong background in cyber-security to offer the best guidance.

If your data is unusually large (CAD drawings, videos, pictures, etc.) the time it takes to send/receive the files may not be acceptable. If many people in a local office need to access the data, then even medium size files may be too large. Hybrid models can be a possibility where other kinds of functions (CRM, EMR, transaction records, etc) can still be cloud-based.

If your company is a good candidate, then we believe cloud services are generally a better alternative to local servers. A good cloud facility has more resources than most single businesses. They have redundant backups, redundant power, redundant air conditioning and a large number of system administrators. So on the average they are able to provide a higher quality and more dependable environment for our client’s data than housing that data on local servers.

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