Ferrum Technology Services Blog

Productivity is crucial to every workplace. If your employees are not properly leveraging their opportunities to be productive, then they are ultimately costing your business a considerable amount. Thanks to technology solutions, you can help your employees stay productive in numerous ways--chief among them being access to crucial data and applications.

The cloud has brought with it a plethora of benefits for small businesses, so many that organizations often are under the impression that the cloud can solve even the biggest issues. While we can’t speak for each and every business out there, we can say with confidence that regardless of your organization’s size, it can benefit in some way, shape, or form from a little bit of cloud implementation.

Businesses of all types have looked to the cloud as a way to receive the goods and services they could use to improve their ability to create revenue, while not having to lay out huge chunks of capital in which to get the dynamic computing infrastructure. Today, developers are creating useful cloud-based applications that not only provide growing businesses the resources they need, they increasingly give workers flexibility, through their inherent accessibility. Today, we will take a look at five cloud-based applications that can really benefit a small business.

With businesses dealing with and storing more data, cloud storage platforms have begun to be extremely important for the modern small business. It took a while for small business decision makers to implement cloud storage solutions for their businesses, which is largely to blame on the stigma of insecurity the cloud had. Today, however, cloud platforms are used for all types of utility. Today, we’ll go into the types of cloud storage, and their benefits to a small business.

Most businesses rely on email in at least some capacity. Nowadays, organizations often choose to outsource the management of their email servers, including their hosting, to other organizations, most notably cloud providers for ease of use. Here are some of the benefits that you can gain from switching your in-house email management to a cloud-based email server.

Cloud computing is taking the business world by storm. Despite this, not every organization has made the switch. While every company that hasn’t yet migrated to the cloud has their reasons, one big reason often tops the list: the perceived lack of cost savings. Thanks to a new study, this perception is now proven to be inaccurate.

If we asked you what the most significant trend in today’s professional environment is, what would you say? For those who depend on technology to manage and maintain their operations, the cloud has allowed for some of the biggest and best advantages--so much that it’s perhaps one of the most prominent shifts that the world has ever seen.

For much of the past century, if you wanted to work among the clouds, you’d join the Air Force and take it from there. Nowadays, however, working among the clouds can mean that you want to work with advanced computer systems that deliver computing, security, storage, and utilities to businesses and end-users from all around the world.

How many ways can you think of to share a file between two workstations? The more ways you know how to share a file, the less chance there is that you’ll be stuck without access to critical files due to an Internet outage. This week’s tip will inform you of four different ways to help your business share files.

You might be surprised to learn how much the cloud can change the way you do business. What follows are some of the most valuable ways your business can leverage the cloud.

A recent survey shows that 43 percent of IT decision makers plan on investing more in the cloud in 2017. When you compare this projection with the steady cloud adoption rate we’ve seen over the past decade, it becomes obvious that the cloud is the next evolution of business computing. As exciting as this is, it’s important to adopt the cloud with a degree of caution.

Paper documents, manila folders, and file cabinets have long been symbols of office work. Today, these once-proud symbols are looked down upon, due in part to the public being more environmentally conscious, as well as advancements made in cloud computing that make a paper-centric workflow an inefficient option.

As a business owner, it’s your responsibility to account for each and every one of your organization’s software solutions, but do you know the exact value that your business is getting from them? This can be challenging when managing software solutions locally on each of your workstations, but the cloud makes this astronomically easier.

One major advantage of the cloud is that it allows users to easily share files. Although, due to just how easy it is to share files, this advantage may also prove to be a disadvantage, especially when inexperienced users are the ones doing the sharing. The next time your business shares a file with a cloud-based file sharing service, be sure to account for these three risks.

Cloud computing gives businesses plenty of choices for how they want their assets managed. There are three different types of clouds: public, private, or hybrid. Some businesses have found that the public cloud is their preferred way of handling the management of their critical systems. We’ll investigate some of the finer details so that you can decide on the solution which suits your business best.

Here are three reasons why small businesses might prefer the public cloud over the other options.

The Cloud is Easy to Use
When your business hosts data in-house, you’re the one responsible for its upkeep and maintenance. Any major changes to your infrastructure would be your responsibility as well, which effectively means that any and all changes would have to be managed or supervised by either yourself or your internal IT department. Alternatively, utilizing the public cloud is easier and less time-consuming for your hosting needs. The public cloud makes it easy to make changes to your infrastructure, like adding new users or scaling up your resources. Just put in a support request to your cloud provider and you’re all set.

It should also be pointed out that it is possible to make use of a private cloud platform without having to manage every detail yourself. By outsourcing the responsibility of managing your private cloud to a managed service provider like Ferrum Technology Services, you can still enjoy the benefits of hosting your data in-house, as well as take advantage of Ferrum Technology Services’s infrastructure for your own use.

The Public Cloud is Secure Enough
One main point for you to take away here is that going through a public cloud provider gives you the opportunity to spend less on security while achieving a similar result to that of a private solution. While using a private cloud solution allows you to augment your cloud security with secondary solutions, we want you to remember that the public cloud is also a relatively secure experience. Public cloud providers have security experts which, if you’re a small business owner, can be preferable to hosting and managing your own in-house private cloud solution, as well as paying for full-time on-site IT technicians.

Implementing a cloud solution is a difficult choice for many businesses, primarily because it represents a change in the way your organization functions. If you make a rash decision before doing your research, it might lead to downtime or a decrease in operability. Therefore, it’s important to understand why businesses move to the cloud, as well as what’s available for implementation.

Your business relies on swift, unfettered access to sensitive documents on many different mobile devices. The only problem with this is that security eventually becomes a problem, especially where multiple devices are concerned. You need to ask yourself if your file-sharing service is secure enough to protect important files.

Decision makers for small and medium-sized businesses certainly have a tough job. Each choice they make on the behalf of the business has repercussions, which could potentially influence the rest of the company, for better or for worse. Therefore, we’d like to take some of the pressure off of the decision makers with a recommendation: if you haven’t done so, consider utilizing Office 365 for your business’s various needs.

Making the move to the cloud is far from an easy task. You need a process that’s tailored specifically for your organization, and one which is open to adaptation. If your plans are foiled by unexpected complications, it can be difficult to keep on track, and your cloud’s migration could become a nightmare.

When hosting your IT infrastructure in-house, it’s nice to know that your servers and network equipment are being cared for to your specifications. However, are you providing the maintenance and management needed to maximize ROI and minimize downtime? The solution is virtualization.