Venyu Blog

I could quote from the cloud computing best practices handbook for SMBs all day long but when you come right down to it migrating data offisite to a virtual container all boil down to the same basic tenets: how much is it going to cost me and will it make my life any easier?  Fortunately, there’s a recent column in Information Week that answers both of these questions, and several others in a direct, declarative fashion. These include:

• Cloud Economics Are Friendly. With the cloud, SMBs only pay a set cost each month – nothing more. Businesses pay for what they use when they use it. There are no other bills that arrive three months later for some other random cost.
• Say Goodbye to complexity. Building and equipping a disaster recovery data center is typically a project that costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, takes months and months of planning and execution, and requires specialists from multiple disciplines. The cloud enables SMBs to configure and start a new server in a remote data center with just a few mouse clicks.
• Execute with Speed. When a project involves significant cost, manpower, external resources, and long time-tables, there is significant risk of project failure. For this reason, extensive planning and research is done prior to execution. When a project can be completed in a few hours with little or no commitment and small amounts of money and manpower, the risk associated becomes very small.
• Remain Flexible. Long term commitments (like buying equipment or building infrastructure) require precise planning for long term needs. Meanwhile, short-term commitments allow less precise planning over smaller time periods, and on-demand allows for trial-and-error. It’s practical to pick a server size at random – if it doesn’t fit, simply stop, and start up a new one that seems more appropriate.

Others are detailed in the column, however, suffice to say if you need to grow your business while simultaneously controlling the costs to achieve that growth, cloud computing may be your best (and only option) if for no other reason than it puts your needs and those of your business first.