By: Mimi Ho

If you have not heard of the Cloud, you will soon. A recent Gartner study predicted that 20% of IT Companies will own no IT Assets in the next 18 months due to what is being called a break-through disruptive technology for small businesses.

Cutting out the noise made from all the hype, what is "Cloud Computing". Truth be known, Cloud Computing has been around for 15+ years it's just only recently had a facelift and been given a name. As a matter of fact, many of you are using the "Cloud" as you read this article.

Cloud Computing simply put is replacing local IT systems, with hosted systems that take the management, upgrading and support of the systems, away from the end user and make it the responsiblity of the hosting provider. Its goal is to transform IT into a utility, much like the way you use power; you do not know or care how the power is generated, you don't have a maintenance agreement with the powerstation and you only pay for what you use.

Web Hosting is traditionally a "Cloud Solution" which many of you will use today. Chances are you pay a "Hosting Provider" to host your website. This costs you $15 per month, and you don't care about how many web servers there are, where they are hosted or when maintenance is due. You are outcome driven, meaning all you want is a website on the internet for your $15.

Only now has broadband and technology caught up and allowed a myriad of other traditionally local functions to be delivered through the cloud. Now even desktop PC's can be hosted in the Cloud known as "Hosted Desktops". This removes the need to buy any servers, PC's, backups or software at all. It is delivered, as a utility all for a fixed per user per month fee (pay for use). But why go through all the headache of moving stuff to "The Cloud". The real value proposition is in the huge benefits a business can achieve from making this decision:

• Less stress - by removing the headaches of maintaining dedicated onsite equipment, staff can focus on business activity as opposed to dealing with changing backups, slow computers and time consuming IT fixes
• More Reliable - The Cloud environment is fully managed and redundant meaning you are not reliant on single piece of hardware as you may in a local IT environment. The systems are also generally monitored 24x7
• You save money - You remove your IT Support Costs and 3 year cycle of replacing all your old equipment
• You pay only for what you use - no more wastage on overpowered servers/workstations
• Access from anywhere - means more productive staff and improved responsiveness for your customers; Your staff get access to your new cloud solution from anywhere with an internet connection

Our relationship with the cloud has been exciting to date. Since 2008, R & G has run it's wholly owned Award Winning Cloud Platform known as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) which is now used by publicly listed and national organisations. Through our cloud assessments conducted with business owners, we have found that the Cloud does not suit all businesses . People that are generally NOT suited to the cloud are:

• Businesses that have a legal requirement for data to be kept onsite (eg. Financial Institutions, People who keep credit card numbers on file etc)
• Businesses with graphic intensive applications - Web Designers, CAD Designers, Advertising Agencies
• Businesses unable to get good broadband coverage - The cloud relies on having a reliable high speed internet connection and thus anyone not able to get ADSL2 is probably not suitable.
• Businesses that do a significant amount of scanning - Mortgage Brokers etc. This is really dependent on the broadband connection but caution should be taken and appropriate testing conducted to ensure the Cloud is the correct solution

The Cloud is a lot of hype, but behind it there are some real opportunities to save thousands of dollars while reaping significant business benefits. Before you choose to make a move to the Cloud, make sure you speak to a credible consultant who will give you an honest assessment of whether it would suit your organisation, and then take your time to select the right Cloud Provider because the biggest secret they don't tell you is it is a lot harder to change IT Support Provider, than to move your services from one Cloud provider to another!