Managing in the Cloud

By Bryant Hill, President Harper Communication

Effective management, monitoring and maintenance of the IT environment is critical to the success of any company – new or old, small or large, marginal or booming. The success of every company is dependent upon the excellent functioning of its IT environment. Conversely, every company is subject to be destroyed by an ineffective, poorly managed, poorly monitored and/or poorly maintained IT environment.

Inevitably, as a company grows, it buys more IT hardware, software and applications. When this happens, it brings on more IT staff AND more IT managers.  This becomes another operations responsibility a company must account for on its books and within its budgeting process. The “IT environment management” phenomenon takes on a life of its own because now a company must incur and sustain an increase in HR staff, payroll, employee benefits and office space to house the additional IT equipment and employees.

Nevertheless, the purchase of new IT hardware, software and applications along with the hiring of IT management and staff does not immediately ensure IT success. The long ramp-up times for personnel to become acquainted and acclimated to a new job, coupled with the time expended to create an effectively functional IT environment can often take more time than a company has to recover the expenses incurred.

These facts, coupled with the ultimate sad facts that people really work normally for five hours per day, and IT environments function at fifteen percent of capacity almost 100% of the time, suggest that an on-site IT environment functioning “on all cylinders” is nothing more than a pipe dream.

Management, monitoring and maintenance of a company’s IT environment in “the cloud” 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 “real cost” drain of IT operations.

Management of a company’s IT environment in “the cloud” can be a real boost to a company’s productivity, human resource management, office space utilization, capital expenditure savings and ultimately, its bottom line.  Sometimes, this is as simple as addition through subtraction. For example, with the subtraction of budget line items for more personnel, hardware, space, employee benefits, etc., as a company grows, real profitability can continue to increase without the encumbrances of increased operations and personnel costs.

The “Field of Dreams” analogy of “If we build it, they (customers) will come…” does not apply anymore in business. In fact, a company must be agile, elastic, flexible and dynamic in order to realize short-term and long-term profitability in today’s marketplace. Nowadays, spending money on building an IT infrastructure prior to profitability is a potential recipe for disaster for every company.

However, a company can be agile, elastic, flexible and dynamic with its IT operations by placing and having its IT environment managed, maintained and monitored in the cloud by a third-party vendor whose expertise is IT Managed Services and cloud computing, thereby protecting its profitability from profit-eating operations costs.  In fact, cloud computing and IT 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 and managing the IT environment in “the cloud.”

Want to learn more?  Tune in to our free webinar on July 26^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.