How the Cloud Can Be Customized for Your Business

By now, most businesses have implemented a cloud solution or at the very least took a long, hard look at one. Some businesses might not even realize some of their data is in the cloud. For the small or medium-sized business the benefits are too numerous to ignore. Not only can the cloud cut your capital technology costs, but increasing mobility can provide anywhere access to crucial IT systems. It provides a ubiquitous data delivery system to improve organizational mobility. With its proverbial laundry list of benefits, including cost reduction, have you taken a close enough look at the cloud for your business?

Cloud Options
There are three major cloud computing platforms that every small and medium-sized business owner should know. They are Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Each of these offerings can be deployed from a public or private cloud system.

• Platform as a Service - PaaS provides organizations with a platform that provides users all the computing they need to develop, run, and manage web-based applications. This interface allows for high-level customization, without the complexity inherent in traditional development platforms. In other words, this is an extremely custom solution developed specifically for your unique needs.
• Infrastructure as a Service - IaaS provides users with a fully virtualized computing infrastructure platform. This interface allows users to do anything they would regularly do on their traditional computers. It can be hosted as an outsourced solution, or on a partitioned on-site server.
• Software as a Service - SaaS is basically the delivery of a piece of software that’s hosted in the cloud. By implementing a software as a service plan, users get the same software that they would have had to purchase and manage, in the cloud for a flat monthly fee. This allows business to shift costs from the capital budget to the operations budget, on a month-to-month basis. Microsoft’s Office 365 is a popular example of this.

Cloud Security
While it took some time for cloud computing to convince business professionals that it is a secure enough platform to “do” business over, cloud implementation, specifically SaaS offerings, have seen an impressive increase over the past three years. This growth is due in large part to the revelation that a cloud interface is as secure as any other server as long as they are managed and maintained properly.

A solution hosted in a data center that’s three states away is equally secure as the cloud environment hosted in your server room as long as they use the same security protocols; in fact, they can often afford better security than your budget may allow. For this reason the cloud’s upward trend figures to continue. By relying on secure and scalable cloud platforms, businesses can find affordable computing resources from dozens of reputable vendors that are no less secure than if you hosted them yourself.

If you are one of the many business owners who feel as if they absolutely need control of their organization’s data, relying on a cloud platform that’s hosted outside of your place of business may be a difficult change to make. If you believe that controlling security permissions in-house and deploying it to the people that absolutely need it is the only way to keep your organization safe from security issues, then it may be time to reconsider that position by considering the benefits that integrating a cloud solution can deliver.

At Macro Systems, we can build a secure and powerful cloud platform that meets the needs of your business, and we can set you up with any cloud resource you may need to keep your IT costs low without losing the essential computing systems your business depends on. Call us today at (703) 359-9211 to speak with one of our trusted technology professionals.