Why SMEs need Cloud?

Like Enterprises, Cloud Computing can prove commercially viable for many Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).

This makes SMEs quick and agile and enables them to conduct business faster and better. SMEs understand can bring to their business especially with regard to cost effectiveness, Operational efficiency and scalability. 

Benefits of Cloud for SMEs:- 

                                                       

a). Reduced Costs - Cloud Computing helps SMEs to reduce costs, both capital Expenditure (OPEX) especially with regards to IT resources, power and energy. Cloud Computing significantly brings down the expenditure associated with the purchase and upgrading of Physical hardware so the infrastructure is owned managed and maintained by the service provider. Operational Costs associated with managing and maintaining systems (technical staff and Software updates) are also taken care of by the Service provider. Reduced power/energy in turn implies that organizations can easily meet their green mandates.

b). Pay-As-You-Use Model - With Cloud Computing SMEs pay for a Software or Service only when they use it instead of buying it. They also do not to invest in expensive data centers or maintain them internally. The biggest advantage of Cloud computing is that SMEs can access enterprise level technology which their normal IT budgets may not be able to afford. When there is a need for business ramp up, SMEs just need to turn up the bandwidth users and processing power as required.

c). Remote Access and Business Expenditure:- 

With Cloud Computing employees can access information wherever they are, instead of having to remain in one Physical location. This immensely benefits remote/mobile workers. A growing SME Organization can add new users on demand from any location, thereby further reducing the time reqd. to expand operations. The Cost of expansion can also be mitigated, because expensive hardware is no longer required for new employees. Power usage, cooling requirements and the costs of internally housed servers also decreases.

d). Easy to implemented & Quick Deployment Time:- 

Implementing Cloud services are easy; the time taken for the process is also less unlike a hardware implementation which can take several hours. The other key benefit is the ability to easily bring different applications together. Cloud services that incorporate Open internet standards-based APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) accessible through web services, help diverse systems communicate together easily.

e). High availability- Cloud-based services that most service providers offer are backed by SLAs and have stringent access controls for Physical and remote access to the data centre. In case a line goes down or a power outage occurs, the data centre will have a power and connectivity fail over to ensure redundancy and continued uptime. If Cloud service providers of SMES information are stored in disparate locations it will provide data compliance and peace of mind to the SMEs.

f). Level-Paying field for SMEs – Cloud computing allows SMEs to compute more effectively with some of the larger businesses and effectively balances and managed services market becoming more mature, the cost per user becomes very competitive; this makes it a comprehensive value proposition for SMEs.

Why Cloud technogies ?

No need to make a huge capital investment on buying separate desktop applications. 

Key Challenges faced by the firm before the use of cloud :- 

A). Document Mgt. issues – The company used to have multiple versions of the documents at multiple places and we never knew which the final. Apart from this, it also faced the other challenges like unnecessary file creations at different locations and hence there was a continuous risk of confidentiality. 

Solution – It how has access to data from a single source by making use of ‘Document Sharing Service’ offered by the Cloud vendor. 

B). Mobility issues–Updates in the Main application :-

The company always had a challenge in using the core application of the project management software. People are always on the move and every time the team has to update the work done they had to come to office to sync. 

C). Real-time updating & Co-ordination issues – 

The Company used to collect lot of information over e-mail/Phone and had to allocate one person exclusively for data collection and collation.

Solution – The Company used ‘Mail Communication’, ‘Employee Attendance’, Timesheet and Payroll Process’ Cloud solutions along with the ‘Document Sharing’ service which decreased Co-Ordination problems. 

Matter to be consider before adopting Cloud :- 

a). What is the Current problem your business is facing? Will moving on the cloud help? 

b). Cloud needs Internet, is it available when your team is on the move?

c). It Comes with a monthly cost, are you ready for incurring that? 

d). What is your current business process and is it going to be impacted in the new Cloud  environment? 

e). How often your data is backed locally? Cloud will have a mirror, but a copy of it is equally critical at your end and also in a format /Structure that you can easily use or retrieve.

Current challenges are facing with cloud computing ?

a). Vendor lock-in :- Struck with one vendor and no knowledge wheather the vendor is using the best technology.

b). Data Migration :- The Data/Migration process might be a challenge from one vendor to another since data might be stored in different formats.

c). Pricing & Negotiating Power :- Struck with the price points and can’t negotiate much. The model is pay-per-User.

d). Bandwidth issues:- Connectivity is the backbone of the Cloud solutions and low spped bandwidth is a major Killer in these applications.

e). Data Security :- Although everyone said it is safe to have the data on the Cloud, the firm is not Confident of the security of the Vendor.