The Cloud Is Calling You: It's Time To Replace The Server Room
If you haven't already, it's time to replace the server room
You know that little room in your office with all the noisy fans? You call it the server room now, but you might want to start thinking of it as a tiny history museum. The days of on-site memory and processing power are winding down for small businesses, and not a minute too soon.
Think about it. When was the last time you thought about your server? Probably it was the last time the IT guy was in there moving around wires to fix an outage or upgrade your system.
Those kinds of headaches may have been worth coping with when you really needed your hardware in the office, but that's just no longer the case. Improvements in cloud technology over the past few years make it easy to transition into an intuitive virtual system that sidesteps the cost and annoyance of local machines.
One of the biggest signs that times are changing is the end of the Windows Small Business Server, as recently reported on ZDNet.com. Microsoft has discontinued the edition that's tailored to small businesses with just one server, because it's becoming clear that it's a disappearing niche. Instead, ZDNet said, Microsoft is encouraging small business customers to move to Windows Server 2012 Essentials, a hybrid on-premises cloud server preconfigured to communicate with remote devices.
For some companies, the Windows product or another hybrid system may be ideal. That kind of setup can make it easy to work with large files by storing them locally while providing backup, extra storage and remote access from any device through the cloud.
Other businesses may find they want to move everything to the cloud. Companies like Citrix and VMware now sell hosted desktops that turn any computer, tablet or smartphone into a portal to the company's IT system. Fully virtual IT can save money by eliminating the need for new hardware purchases and centralizing support and management services.
It can also change the nature of a business office as a whole, giving salespeople the same access to their systems from hotel rooms as they would have in a cubicle, paving the way for new alternatives for a remote telecommuter. Taking A Bite Out Of Terror
On a more basic level, cloud computing can eliminate the potential for terror that comes with having all your crucial data in one spot. Any system — real or virtual — should be backed up, protecting against natural disasters, theft or malicious hacking, computer viruses and simple human error. Even a business that continues to keep all its systems on a local server should at least use the cloud for backup. After web hosting and email hosting, it's the most popular cloud service, and for obvious reasons: saving information in two or more places is clearly smarter than keeping everything in one building.
But why stop there? There are so many advantages to moving a significant part of your IT assets to the cloud — from cost benefits to better access — that it's certainly worth at least considering your options.
Besides, if you got rid of the fans, that tiny room would make a great office for your next intern, don't you think?
Kirill Bensonoff is principal partner at ComputerSupport.com, in Framingham.
Image credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net.
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