Flexibility: When your system is hosted in the cloud, you can access your system from anywhere with an internet connection. That means you can access customer records in the field, manage ongoing service, order parts, and more—without needing to be at your workstation. There are ways to remote-desktop a mobile device into your server (maybe you’re already doing this)—but that approach isn’t secure. It’s much easier for hackers to enter your network via remote desktop connections.
Scales with your Business: Using servers to store your data and processes will become more costly as your business grows. This is because larger hardware with more processing power will be needed to prevent the system from being overtaxed as new information and data are stored on the server. With the cloud, you don’t need to worry about hardware costs or overburdening your system – it grows with your business needs. That means downsizing is as easy as scaling up.
We made the decision to go to a cloud network when we needed to purchase a new AS400 so instead of shipping it back and forth, we went with DIS and put it in the data center. It allowed us to get up and running much faster, it was a good time to make that decision because DIS has all the hardware and you don’t have to deal with the shipping time and problems that occur waiting for it when it’s in transit and then setting it up in your store. When we pulled the trigger on cloud hosting at the time, we were four stores and what happened several times is if we lost power, or our fiber connection was cut, we realized we were shutting down the entire company hosting it ourselves. With cloud, no catastrophe at any one store would impact the others. It gave us the continuity to be able to keep our business moving forward in the event of a flood, power outage, or other disasters. At the main store where we had it – even though we had a large generator, there would still always be a delay. We would lose that connection which would knock everyone else off the system too, so that was part of the reason why we switched. With cloud hosting and cloud backup, you don’t have to worry about the employee taking tapes offsite or worst case, just using the tapes. As businesses grow and get bigger and bigger, the more valuable those backups become, and the business can keep carrying on. We all buy insurance for not wanting to use them and using cloud hosting and backup is a cheap alternative.
JASON COLLINS Lansdowne-Moody
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