Only 28 percent of small-business owners completely understand the concept of cloud computing, while 42 percent of respondents said they are not using cloud computing at all and 35 percent said they were using it only for data storage, according to the latest “Brother Small-Business Survey,” from Brother International, which examined the role of technology in small business. Small-business owners also noted using the cloud for document management (21 percent) as well as business applications […]
small businesses
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Jonathan Edwards, managing director of Harrogate-based YorkshireCloud.co.uk, a cloud computing service tailored for SMEs, gives his tips on harnessing the power of the cloud. 1. Cloud computing is 100 per cent reliant on an internet connection, so you should always have a plan of what to do when your main connection fails. A cost effective method for smaller companies is to buy a 3G capable router and pay around £10 per month for a broadband […]
The cloud computing model represents an important change in how information technology works. Just as the major changes that happened first with the client-server application model and then with the Internet, the drivers of this new revolution are accessibility and cost – how can computing infrastructure, platforms and applications have more widespread usage and how can they be made cheaper. In fact, price and accessibility go hand-in-hand: the cheaper technology becomes, the more people will […]
You are a small business, therefore, you need an easy way to communicate with your customers and vice versa. Picking a phone system that you can rely on is a complicated, tricky business, and not really something you want to hassle with at the end of the day. Ultimately, the choice comes down to two options. A traditional phone system relies on phone lines that are connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), on […]
Just a few years ago, the small business tech catch phrase was Voice over IP (VoIP). By now VoIP is the standard in telephony. A Computer Economics study shows that by 2009, nearly 60 percent of organizations had adopted VoIP and more than half are investing in VoIP. The initial draw for small businesses to make the switch to VoIP related to cost savings — namely, there are no toll charges or long distance fees […]
One of the few sure things in the online world is Amazon.com. The site never seems to go down, despite the fact that it’s serving millions of customers every day. Yet even the mighty Amazon — or, more accurately, its cloud services unit, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud — collapsed in April for about 24 hours, taking with it customers like Reddit, foursquare, Hootsuite and hundreds of other websites, some of them run by small businesses. […]
“You don’t know what you don’t know” might be the expression most appropriate for small to medium-size businesses (SMB) when it comes to the benefits of technology and their business, according to an independent survey of more than 500 SMB decision makers released at National Small Business Week. The study, commissioned by Verio Inc., a provider of online business solutions to SMBs worldwide, showed that more than two-thirds of respondents are uncertain if they will […]
Many small businesses are still uncertain about cloud computing and wonder if it can help boost profitability without being extremely risky. To figure it out, it’s best to start by defining cloud computing in small business terms. There are two commonly agreed upon types of cloud computing: 1) software-as-a-service and 2) infrastructure-as-a-service. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) refers to cloud computing where the software you would normally install on your office computers is instead delivered over the Internet. […]
Traditional systems management has been obscured in large part by the advent of cloud, where, after all, the promise is cheap, automated infrastructure you don’t have to manage, just use. But as the public cloud paradigm has proven out, more and more businesses, both small and large, want to replicate that success in their own operations. For some small businesses, the case for cloud is pretty obvious. Chuck Spalding, a hydrogeologist with McDonald Morrissey Associates, […]
Almost 40 per cent of SMEs expect to be paying for one or more cloud services within three years, according to a Microsoft report. The IT vendor announced the results of its third annual worldwide study into how SMEs will use cloud services over the next three years. A total of 3,258 companies with 2-250 employees were surveyed in 16 countries. The survey found that 39 per cent of SMEs expect to be paying for […]
It may sound like a PR ploy, but “cloud computing” truly is a different way of using technology resources, and more firms are adopting it. If your head hasn’t been lost up in the cirrus or cumulus, you’ve probably heard of cloud computing over the last few years. “The cloud” has figured prominently in President Obama’s technology initiatives, in the business plans of familiar tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, and even in […]
Small business (SME) are increasingly acknowledging the power of working in the cloud. At a time of ongoing economic uncertainty, cloud computing technology has the great benefit of being low-cost; easy to implement and use; flexible and scalable. Today, many of these businesses are actively developing their own cloud applications and tailoring them to their precise needs. Indeed, cloud-based application development is particularly well suited to the SME community for which time and resources are […]
Top Tips For Decision-Making & Deployment If your small business is considering adopting cloud computing, you’re not alone. A recent survey of 1,000 small to midsized businesses by researchers at MarketBridge found that 44% of respondents had already deployed at least one cloud-based application. In addition, more than 70% of those surveyed planned to move at least one new application to the cloud within six months. Why are smaller companies so attracted to cloud computing? […]
Ciaran Treanor, technology director, DANU Technologies, outlines why SMEs, specifically start-ups, can significantly reduce IT spend by accessing IT resources on demand via the cloud. Treanor was one of the speakers at last week’s cloud computing event hosted by The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) (Ireland) at Trinity College Dublin, which aimed to inform people what the cloud has to offer start-ups and small enterprises, especially those in the non-IT space that may be […]
Adoption of cloud computing in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) may be on the rise but many companies remain clueless about the technology. This was the finding of a new survey by PeoplePerHour.com PeoplePerHour.com. After talking to 1,300 SMEs across the UK, it discovered almost three quarters of the respondents (74 per cent) didn’t use cloud computing and 43 per cent of those didn’t even know what the term meant. Furthermore, more than a third […]
Microsoft today named some of the country’s top “cloud-friendly” U.S. cities. The rankings are based on the results of an extensive survey in which 2,000 IT decision makers nationwide discussed how they are adopting and using cloud computing. The forecast for cloud computing across key U.S. cities calls for new lines of business, more need for IT services, and potential job growth, according to a new survey released today by Microsoft. Microsoft released the results […]
Moving a company’s server room and local applications to the cloud can eliminate hassles and reduce expenses if you proceed with a good strategy. Cloud computing enables small businesses to offload all sorts of heavy tech lifting to a third party, freeing you to focus your efforts (and local storage space) on core services and clients. Cloud computing can mean many things, but in essence it describes IT tools delivered through Internet-based services. A growing […]
Cloud computing has been a buzzworthy topic for some time, as more and more enterprises move their computing infrastructure and software to cloud-based solutions. While the cloud continues to be a smart option for them, it’s also arguably even more beneficial for small businesses, whose resources can be miniscule. First of all, what exactly is cloud computing? To take a broad definition, Focus Research describes it as “the ability for organizations to share critical computing […]
A lack of proper understanding appears to be dissuading many small businesses from investing in cloud computing, it has been reported. According to Clodagh Murphy, director at Eclipse, it is not so much cost issues which put off such enterprises – rather the apparent complexity of the technology. She said that cloud computing must be explained to business owners in plain English which they can fully understand. Ms Murphy added that when embracing the cloud, […]