“Cloud computing”— have you noticed everyone is talking about it these days? More than just a catchy buzzword, cloud computing is a way that your business can meet the increasing IT demands of mobile technology and a remote workforce while simultaneously reducing business operating costs.
WHAT IS CLOUD COMPUTING?
For many companies, maintaining a dedicated proprietary private network can be impractical. With cloud computing, computing services are hosted elsewhere, accessed over the Internet in data centers located throughout the world.
Those data centers maintain the infrastructure and services that your business needs to operate, including servers, storage devices, development platforms, data, programs, or software. With cloud computing, these are stored, managed, and processed in a virtual environment, rather than on a local server or computer hard drive. Individuals access these services over the Internet, at any time and from anywhere.
Authentication procedures ensure that the devices and the people using them are safe and permitted to connect to the cloud. In addition, data can be encrypted as it enters, leaves, and exists in the cloud to keep it secure.
HOW CAN YOU BENEFIT FROM OPERATING IN THE CLOUD?
Cloud computing can save your business time and money by increasing productivity and collaboration, promoting the exchange of ideas among employees, and reducing IT infrastructure investments.
- Availability – Access applications and systems from anywhere
When you move your business-critical applications and systems to a cloud environment, you receive increased availability and uptime. Employees get access to data and applications from any location at any time—and they can take advantage of the convenience of mobile computing and BYOT. Information sharing is easy via cloud-based email, web-based phone systems, applications hosting, collaboration software, and data storage.
- Scalability – As your business grows, your technology will scale on-demand
Cloud computing takes place in a virtual environment, so keeping pace with your IT demands as they change or grow is easy. You can increase or decrease your capacity needs as your IT requirements change, meaning money isn’t being wasted on unnecessary resources.
- Reliability – Redundant power and cooling offer a stable environment
The data centers utilized for cloud computing are protected by generators and technologically-advanced cooling equipment. Even if the power goes out, the data centers will keep your data accessible and safe.
- Improved Security and Disaster Recovery – Less risk, faster recovery
The peace of mind that comes with knowing you can get your business back up and running quickly after a security breach or disaster is priceless. Cloud computing offers the benefits of storing data virtually, updating it as you work, and automating off-site data backup. Information can be replicated across several data centers, making it always available in case of local system failure or disaster. Disaster recovery time is shortened because information is not tied to specific hardware and can be moved amongst data centers.
- Affordability – Reduced infrastructure investments for hardware replacements
Physical IT infrastructure, hardware upgrades, licensing, and training costs are minimized, and IT resources are allocated as needed, reducing overall costs. For small- and mid-sized businesses, this can mean real savings.
REVEILLE SYSTEMS CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS
Reveille Systems, Inc. offers Cloud Computing Services that make enterprise-class solutions available and affordable, to customers of any size:
- Web Hosting – Don’t let your business website be unavailable due to a server crash or unreliable Internet connection. Our web developers and engineers can design and optimize a web hosting solution to ensure your web presence is always available and online.
- Microsoft Dynamics CRM – Take advantage of enhanced collaboration features in Microsoft Outlook and other applications. You’ll be able to organize and automate business processes focused on customer relationship management.
- Microsoft SharePoint – Enable real-time collaboration across internal and external teams, centralize storage, allow online editing and co-authoring, and create blogs and wikis. SharePoint is an optimal solution for project teams that need access to common files, but also need to maintain version history and authorship.
- Microsoft Exchange – Deliver the ultimate collaboration solution for business-class email with a robust suite of features like contacts, tasks, calendars, shared calendars, and public folders.
- Data Backup – In place of the traditional technique of storing backups on an external hard drive, an increasingly popular remedy is to use an online backup service that saves the data on servers in the cloud.
- Disaster Recovery – Disaster recovery is an area of security planning that aims to protect an organization from the effects of significant negative events. DR allows an organization to maintain or quickly resume mission-critical functions following a disaster.
