Cloud Computing – What You Need to Know

By Bryant Hill, President Harper Communication

As an executive, your time is best spent  focusing on your mission, and not IT.

We believe that cloud computing is designed to allow a company to grow, focus on their mission, focus on profitability and not IT operations, and reduce costs and become profitable while minimizing (and possibly even eliminating) the distractions of IT operations.

When it comes to a company’s operations, invariably as the organization grows, the need for more hardware, software and programs to keep the business running becomes inevitable.

However, the company did not go into business to bring on staff, expand human resources, pay salaries, benefits, and create work-life balance to support and perpetuate hardware and software. These resources are reserved for human capital to move the organization forward with sales, marketing, R&D, customer service, etc.

Every company has a mission, goals, a business plan, directives and projections that don’t include how perfectly they operate their IT Department. These core values are reserved for the core business. Nevertheless, companies spend as much as 35% of their operating budget on IT because that is how the IT “beast within” can grow and consume the organization.

Cloud computing and Managed Service Packages (MSP), or off-site management of the IT environment can significantly reduce the real costs of IT management for a “smart” company. This is very simply done by moving IT operations to the “cloud”.

Because the cloud is a metaphor for the internet, if operations are moved to a cloud computing services provider over the internet, on-site IT operations can be reduced significantly.

• No longer is it necessary to maintain a controlled environment for servers, which is a huge operating expense in space and environmental resources such as power, heating and air-conditioning.
• No longer is it necessary to provide salaries, benefits and work-life balance to personnel solely dedicated to IT.
• No longer is it necessary to make huge capital expenditures for hardware like servers, HVAC equipment, software packages and security programs that may only be used at 13% of their operating capacity most of the time.
• No longer is it necessary to pay huge salaries to IT executives to plan the course of the IT operations for years to come.

Cloud computing allows an organization to contract for IT operations (hardware, software, security, etc.) on a monthly subscription basis through a cloud computing provider. This can help a company grow functionally, but not incur inordinate costs operationally. This can help a company reduce the costs of on-site operations. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service, (SaaS) allow a company attain all of the functionality they need to run their organization over the internet, or through “the cloud”, thereby helping a company grow and reduce the costs of on-site operations exponentially.

“How does my organization begin to explore moving to the cloud?”, you might ask. Our commitment is to provide a free readiness assessment for cloud computing. Just give us a call.

“How can I determine the real costs of cloud computing versus the real costs of my own IT operations?” We can help you with that, too.

“How can I reduce costs through cloud computing?” We’re available to help you take a good, hard, long look at your costs and help identify the cost savings we can provide through cloud computing.

At Harper Communications’ our slogan is “Focus on Your Mission, and Not IT.”

Want to learn more?  Tune in to our free webinar on June 27^th from 10:00 to 10:30, where you’ll be able to ask your questions in an open forum created for you. There is no charge to attend but we ask that you register here.

Harper Communications is a full-service cloud computing, cloud communications, managed services, consulting and training provider. Harper Communications’ products and qualified staff represent a total solution package, a single source for planning, designing and implementing a cloud computing solution.