Should You Move Your Business to the Cloud?

The Desktop Computing era has brought computing power into the hands of the users, but left them still contingent upon IT to provision the back-end infrastructure such as networks, servers and firewalls. Upkeep on in-house infrastructure tends to be daunting and very pricey. What’s more, disaster can ensue at anytime from drive failures, viruses, corrupt databases, server patches and the list goes on. You also need to pay for all the hardware and a team to manage it. Since application servers tend to be driven by departmental budgets, IT infrastructures often end up as over provisioned mishmashes of equipment, processes and technology entailing excessive cost and large inefficiencies with servers running at 15-25% of capacity. Cloud servers, on the other hand, run at 75-90% of capacity. This results in less office space, hardware, staff and power necessities saving a lot of money, and the environment.

Elementary to the Cloud Computing argument is that software is rented rather than bought outright. Finance directors will immediately draw a comparison between the two paths and evidence that after typically 2.5 or 3 years, the rental payments on precisely the same resources would appear to exceed the capital cost: it would thus make little sense to accept a rental agreement.

While that break-point may be right at first sight, Alex Parker of Commensus argues that there are noteworthy considerations to be taken into account. “It assumes that any equipment bought is being fully utilised from the outset. If a company has acquired IT solutions with the capacity to take it forward three or five years, for example, it is paying for resources on which it cannot generate a return on capital. Changed circumstances may mean that the capacity is never fully taken up.”

Cloud Computing offers the prospect of moving most IT expenditure from the balance sheet to the profit & loss account. This in turn removes capital expenditure, reducing operational expenditure and gives small organisations the budget predictability they need. IT departments can then concentrate on the front-end issues that will enable company survival and growth.

With Cloud Hosting, instead of making one capital commitment to buy the hardware and another to acquire expensive software, organisations in effect rent both the hardware and the software, paying only for the resources that are really employed. So you don’t pay anything when services are not needed, doing away with unneeded overprovision of resources to provide for occasional spikes in demands. Companies can go from 20 workstations to 80 and back to 50 again in the time it takes to authorise the online paperwork. This “pay-as-you-grow, save-if-you-shrink” model works out much cheaper in the long run.

In the past, it could take a organisation six to eight weeks to commission an application server. Now, computing power and storage space is becoming a commodity, bought when needed and scaled up when required. This dynamic resource management is enabling businesses to respond quicker to market changes and acquire an advantage over their competitors. It is this agility and scalability that persuades most businesses to venture into the cloud.

But Cloud Computing is more than an IT deployment. Moving into the cloud is a cultural shift as well as a technology shift. For IT staff, and especially the chief technology and chief information officers, it demands a rethinking of their roles. 70% of time previously wasted on operational maintenance and upgrades is then available to spend concentrating on business strategy. This allows a company to take advantage of new opportunities to innovate and grow. Commensus help customers with solutions such as Cloud Computing, Cloud Hosting, VoIP Phone Systems, Exchange Mailbox, Hosted SharePoint, Virtual Desktop.

Cloud Hosted Services Website Launched

Risen Cloud Computing supplier Commensus today declared the launch of a new generation of email and application hosting services named V-Cloud Professional. Commensus are proffering a one stop cloud shop previously unprecedented in the cloud computing space.

Companies are being empowered to satisfy all their email and application asks utilising a effortless web browser portal on any device, anywhere. From Commensus.com, businesses can buy and instantaneously utilise Hosted Exchange Mailbox, Hosted SharePoint, VoIP Phone Systems or a complete Virtual Desktop running Windows 7 and Office 2010.

Steven Fenn, CEO expressed, “This is a noteworthy new service that turns the Cloud Computing market upside down. Whilst first generation Cloud hosting services have needed consultation with sales and engineering staff, V-Cloud Professional turns over the whole power of our cloud infrastructure over to the user. This allows companies who are striving to adjust to the pace and dynamism of business nowadays to utilise highly resilient virtual machines for their staff, and annoints a new era of flexibility.”

Maintenance of in-house email and application servers can be daunting and very pricey. But with hosted email and apps the whole process becomes effortless, so that all you have to do is login, customise and begin. You also save money as you only have to pay for the resources that you in reality want.