Four Reasons Our Head is in the Cloud
As a small to medium sized business, there are certain challenges companies like us face when implementing cloud solutions. iVEDiX has had its figurative head in the cloud from the very beginning, and today hosts solely iVEDiX-owned data like: miVEDiX Configurator, Security Databases, and other web services on its own servers. However, there’s no reason that customer data could not be hosted in a similar fashion.
The advantages to an SMB of using cloud as part of their solution set are many. From an operational perspective, there are four primary bonuses we’ve found to using a cloud-based solution.
1. Reduction of initial hardware purchase and, later, upgrade costs
As anyone who has worked IT will tell you, hardware procurement and maintenance is no small investment. Additional investments occur every time the hardware needs to be upgraded due to age or replaced due to failure. Our cloud delivers all of these at a fixed cost that is, unarguably, much lower than the investment a company would have to making doing so on its own.
2. Less strain on your internal IT staff
Having a server in-house is one thing. But having the knowledge base within your organization to administer and maintain that hardware is something else. Large companies may have entire departments devoted exclusively to System & Network Administration, back-up and disaster recover processes, system investigation and issue resolution. Utilizing cloud, we have all of these things at our disposal without adding additional, highly specialized (and often expensive), head count to the organization.
3. High quality protective processes that many SMBs often cannot afford
This being the case, they may find themselves at the mercy of natural or human-origin catastrophes due to power outages, cyber-attacks or disasters such as fire, flood, or earthquake. Cloud providers, have multiple data centers located on different continents, can survive several weeks of power outages, massive cyber-attacks targeting an entire country or even deadly and devastating natural disasters.
4. Agility
Scalability of the solution is the key in this instance. A phone call or an e-mail and a few hours of lead time are often enough to add or remove capacity or even create whole new servers. A few clicks in a provider’s portal was enough to save nearly $400.00 a month in one instance by turning off a non-essential service. This agility can also benefit our ability to be as light on our feet as the customer’s needs dictate.
Overall, iVEDiX has benefited greatly from being able to leverage cloud-based computing for much of our back-end architecture. Utilizing the advantages and mitigating the risks, we have been able to be as well equipped as a multi-billion dollar company in terms of IT infrastructure for a fraction of the cost. If you are an SMB company, it is well worth your while to investigate this type of solution for yourself.
Join us on:
