3 IT Shifts for Small Business: Cloud
The nature of computing and how it’s used by business is changing – rapidly. You have heard the buzzwords … mobile, social, cloud, big data, analytics, and others. You probably have thought about your own business and thought the these changes are just for the enterprise.
Three major shifts in technology, however, can and will impact your organization: Data; Cloud; and Mobile-Social.
Shift 2: Cloud
Not everything labeled “cloud” is actually “cloud computing”. For our purposes, that’s okay. Whether meeting the strict definition of cloud computing or a hosted service, the cloud is transformational.
Virtualization, one of the underlying mechanisms of building cloud services, is the entry point for most businesses doing it themselves. Virtualization, however, is only the baseline.
The real power of the cloud is that IT and business processes transform into digital services.
Filing an auto insurance claim, for example, used to be a time-consuming process with paper forms, phone calls, visits to repair shops, and meeting with adjusters. Today, filing a claim is digital service available to the policy holder by mobile app that instantly puts the information in the hands of the broker, adjuster, and back-office.
Cloud technology has the power to transform business models. Small businesses are less limited by geography than any other time in human history. Scalable, affordable resources empower companies to experiment and development without prohibitive capital investment. The pace of innovation accelerates and time to market drops.
While some small businesses may deliver cloud-based solutions to customers, for your business, the impact on the customer may be indirect. Better relationship management and systems enhance the way we sell. Better support systems scale with our customer base, enable self-help, and improve communications. Even simple abilities, like secure calendar sharing, make it easier for your customers to make appointments to speak with you and your team.
The cloud makes it easier for us to select specific applications and services. And we can integrate these applications and services into a single computing ecosystem without huge investments in middleware, custom programming, and infrastructure.
Where you start with the cloud depends on how you want your business to evolve. We recommend beginning with a platform that enables communications and collaborations, and can serve as the integration point for CRM, ERP, and other applications, as well as line of business systems.
