If a cloud provider has built their system correctly with the appropriate investments in power, Internet, and internal switching infrastructure; they should have a better chance of keeping the infrastructure up for slightly more of the time than the typical small business can feasibly achieve at their own location.

Often cloud based services are offered on a month to month basis, meaning your firm may be able to avoid some upfront expenditures.

Often cloud providers develop web based management systems that can make it easier to manage some processes and applications.

In some cases it can be easier to “scale up” cloud resources than to do so with internal infrastructure. With “the cloud”, the hardware is often already there and only needs to be allocated.

In the event of a disaster at your local facility that prevents operations; having some or all of your infrastructure in the cloud may be a gift. In a case like this your people could continue operations elsewhere while connecting to the existing cloud infrastructure. Some cloud providers also allow for near instant provisioning of things like databases, servers, and other hardware and software. In these instances spinning up new functions “in the cloud” may make recovery faster than rebuilding locally.

If your internal infrastructure is not being watched over and managed by a group like AVAREN, you could be in a situation where locating your infrastructure in the cloud may be safer for your firm. The cloud providers typically have some method of automated backup, even if often inadequate.

Locating your infrastructure in the cloud means your data is not in your physical possession; as it would be if you had your own infrastructure for example.

In the event of a major outage at a provider, not having physical possession of your machines or data can create work stoppages and recovery delays. In these situations your business is often at the mercy of the cloud provider. It has been rare, but we have seen this cripple businesses in the past. In the worst case it drug on for about 6 weeks.

During a recent speed test performed for a client against a cloud file share, the upload speeds for example were terrible when compared to transferring files to their internal server. The upload speed of their Internet circuit was only about 13Mbps, which left them with an approximate 10X upload time when compared to transferring files to the internal server. If performance is one of your primary concerns, utilizing the cloud for storage operations related to graphics, video, and marketing may prove to be somewhat more frustrating than utilizing storage on your local LAN.

If your infrastructure is not in your physical possession and the system entirely managed by a third party, how do you know who is looking at your data, emails, etc? The unfortunate reality is…you can’t.

Sometimes the backup and recovery tools provided by cloud providers can be less than adequate. Even Microsoft’s own beloved Office 365 cloud service has limitations in this department. We have found it a mandatory precaution to run our own backup processes so that we have the granular restore capabilities we must have to keep executives and users happy. Don’t assume you are protected just because your data is in the cloud; call AVAREN today and put an automated system in place.