Business Cloud Computing: Introductory Guide (promotional eBook)

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BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING

AN INTRODUCTORY GUIDE

CONTENTS

WHAT’S DIFFERENT NOW? .................................................................................................................3

WHY IS CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BUSINESS BECOMING SO POPULAR?................................................4

THERE ARE THREE PRIME TARGETS FOR BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING: .............................................5

WHAT ARE THE MAIN BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BUSINESS? ............................................6

WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BUSINESS? ................................................8

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF COMPUTING IS RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS? .................................................9

PART 1 CONDENSED: ........................................................................................................................ 11

BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING PT 2:3 PROBLEMS CLOUD SOLVES ..................................................... 12

BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING PT 3: 3 MYTHS (AND TRUTHS) ........................................................... 15

BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING PT 4: CHOOSING A SERVICE PROVIDER .............................................. 18

NEED HELP DETERMINING YOUR CLOUD-BASED NEEDS? ................................................................... 20

SUMMARY ....................................................................................................................................... 23

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Technology Management ♦ Network Architecture and Installation ♦ Customized Application Development ♦ Web Design

www.ForeSiteTech.com ♦ 99 East River Drive ♦ East Hartford, CT 06108 ♦ 860.528.1100 ♦ Fax: 860.528.2100 ♦ Sales@ForeSiteTech.com

The cloud is a new invention. True or false?
Answer: False.

The cloud has been here since the Internet started becoming popular in the early ’90s.

According to Wikipedia.org, Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as
a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information
are provided to computers and other devices as a utility (like the electricity grid) over
a network (typically the Internet).

WHAT’S DIFFERENT NOW?

Today, people are using the Internet to perform tasks they traditionally would have
performed on equipment located locally in their offices.

For example, you used to have to have an email server in your office. Now you can
have a Microsoft Exchange server hosted in the cloud. It’s a service. You pay a small
fee per month, per mailbox, versus buying the hardware and putting it in your office.

REMEMBER COMPUSERVE AND AOL?
If you remember when the Internet became popular in the early ’90s, you had
CompuServe or you had AOL. They offered hosted email. It was an email service—
theoretically, cloud-based email. While it wasn’t your own personal server somewhere, it
was using the Internet to perform email tasks.

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Since we’ve had the Internet, people have used it to do things that they couldn’t do on
their own computers or on computers in their own offices. Now it’s just become more of
a business tool, with widely expanded types of functions.

REMEMBER BACKING UP YOUR DATA ON TAPES?
You used to have to back up all your files from your server onto tapes every day. Then
you would take or send the tapes off-site—hide them in your home office safe, put them
in a bunker in the side of a mountain somewhere, etc.

Now there are services that allow you to back up all your data to a server in the cloud.
It’s a way to get your data off-site instantly. You don’t pay, say, $5,000 or $10,000 for
the backup hardware, and you don’t need to manage the backups locally. But when you
use the cloud, you pay a monthly service fee for backing up your data.

WE HAVE TWO PIECES OF CLOUD COMPUTING SO FAR:
1. You’re not bringing equipment into your office. The physical infrastructure is on
the Internet somewhere.
2. Instead of paying up front for it, you’re paying monthly subscription fees.

WHY IS CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BUSINESS BECOMING SO POPULAR?
For two main reasons:
1. In large part, the cloud is becoming popular because of extensive marketing.
People are talking about the cloud, so people feel like they need to be in the
cloud.

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2. The second reason the cloud is a viable solution for many business
applications—not all, but a lot—is that it’s a responsible business decision.
People should evaluate: Do I buy my own server, or do I use a cloud-based
solution? Do I buy that $20,000 CRM software and install it on my own machine,
or do I use a cloud-based version? Something even as simple as QuickBooks
now offers a cloud-based version where you can just subscribe to it—it’s all done
in the cloud.

You can do the math on where that pays off over time, and it all depends upon the
business you’re in. But if a business is trying to keep cash close at hand, then it should
consider these other options (which are viable in a lot of cases).

Based upon what the business plan calls for, it might—or might not—be the right
business solution for you.

THERE ARE THREE PRIME TARGETS FOR BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING:
1. Start-ups
2. Remote offices
3. Rapidly growing businesses

1. Start-ups are a great match for the cloud because they’re trying to conserve their
cash. A start-up business doesn’t know what kind of success it’s going to have. Let’s
say a business invests $20,000 in equipment and finds out in six months that it didn’t
work. Using the cloud, a business can invest, say, $1,000 a month, and be out only
$6,000 versus $20,000.

A business may not know how big its workforce is going to be. You can do all the
market research in the world, but it’s all about who buys, who decides to buy, what
happens to the Dow next week. With the cloud, you don’t have to worry about
continually upgrading an infrastructure.

2. Remote offices are the second type of business well-suited for the cloud. The cloud
works well for remote workers who are either mobile and on the road or working from
their homes, because even though they’re not in the same physical space, they want to
access the same applications that all their coworkers use. Instead of workers having to

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access data through a physical office with hardware, they could access it in the cloud.
This can give all workers easier access to the types of applications they’re using.
3. Rapidly growing businesses are the third prime target for the cloud. Rapidly
growing businesses don’t know how to size what they have, because they don’t know
what kind of growth they’re going to be experiencing. So instead of trying to buy the
right size of server today and having to continually add to it next year or the year after,
they might buy something in the cloud that’s a very scalable solution. Then they can
double, triple, quadruple their footprint with the click of a button.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN BENEFITS OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BUSINESS?
1. Sharing data and applications easily
2. Backing up data automatically
3. Reducing support and maintenance costs

The biggest benefit of using the cloud is the ease of sharing data and applications with
a workforce that is not located in a central office.

If, for example, your main application running your business—most companies have
one—is located on a server in your office, people in the field would have to come into
the office over a bandwidth that most likely is business grade but is limited to whatever
the building can provide.

If your data or applications are located in a big data center in the cloud, these data
centers have huge Internet pipelines and lots of bandwidth. You are still limited by
wherever your staff is located (for example, at Starbucks or at home), but they are only
limited on one side of the transaction. If your data and applications are in your office,
people are limited two ways: by the pipeline where they are and by your pipeline.

For the most part, those data centers stay up and running. Do they ever have outages?
Absolutely, but nowhere near as often as somebody’s home DSL, an office cable
modem or even dedicated T-1s.

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If you’re going to share data and applications with people who are in various locations,
it’s easy to share information from a big server and a big data center with big Internet
pipelines.

The second benefit when using the cloud is automated data backup services allowing
regular data backups.

Tape backup is still widely used, but magnetic media deteriorates over time. There are
problems with the magnetic backups. If the backup didn’t work because the tape was
getting old, that could cause significant problems.

A managed service like ForeSite can monitor your situation and can help catch potential
issues early on.

There is a wide range of automated data backup services available for consumer-type
products. Take Mosey, for instance; for a few dollars a month, all your home pictures
can be backed up to the cloud.

On the other end of the scale, there are full disaster-recovery solutions. In the event that
something happens in your office, you can get your data backed up day to day in case
you delete a file. Or imagine a water pipe bursts in the office and all the servers go
down. Some of these servers can flip a switch so that your data is immediately available
in some sort of a cloud server that people can remotely access, even if it wasn’t there
originally—even if it was originally in your office.

People are combining not only data backup but data backup with disaster recovery, high
availability of applications and infrastructure. All this used to be something that only
large corporations could afford, but it is becoming more accessible for a standard
business. The prices have come down quite a bit. Bandwidth has gotten larger and
cheaper, so more businesses are able to back up their data.

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One of the biggest benefits of cloud computing is reduced costs for support on and
maintenance of the physical hardware and software. If you put your Exchange email
application in the cloud, you don’t have to pay a company to come in and do updates on
the server (and update the latest patches and fix all the things that happen to the
software and the hardware).
Remember: The reality is that those support and maintenance costs are built into the
subscription cost.

WHAT ARE THE DRAWBACKS OF CLOUD COMPUTING FOR BUSINESS?
While cloud computing as a way to store data and applications for a business sounds
like a dream, it does have two drawbacks to consider:
1. 100% reliance on an Internet connection
2. Subscription-based, recurring expenses
3. Leaving the cloud involves migration costs

If people in an office lose their Internet connection, they can’t work and they can’t get to
their applications.

If all business is done in the cloud, you’re 100% reliant upon your data connection;
whether you’re in the office or in the field, your laptop must access a wireless
connection. Business doesn’t get done without access to the Internet.

2. Subscription-based, recurring expenses
The second issue is monthly (or ongoing) fees that you must continually pay. The fees
are regularly occurring. It’s not like you can buy it one year and not have to pay for it for
the next five years—you’re always paying for it.

It comes down to doing some math. You’ve got to figure out what works for your
business. Cloud services are monthly bills, so when you need to cut costs and you can’t
decide what to cut, you’re still going to pay that monthly bill. You can’t cut that. It is what
it is—you’re tied to it. And getting out of it is a big project.

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The problem with leaving the cloud is bringing your data back into the office. If you
decide you want to bring your data into the office, it’s a big project to migrate it.

If you’re doing that because now you’ve decided you want to cut costs, you still have to
spend money for the migration project.

If you decide to buy a server, note that servers typically have a four-to-five-year
lifespan. Let’s say you were going to replace it in year four, but times were a little tough.
You could extend the warranty for an extra year or two and replace it in year five,
maybe year six. At some point you’re risking things, because technology is changing so
fast. But you can do that. You can buy a warranty extension and delay that project. You
can’t do that with monthly subscription fees; even if times are tough, you’ve got to pay
your monthly bill.

HOW DO YOU KNOW IF COMPUTING IS RIGHT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?
The first thing to understand is that it’s not all or nothing. You don’t have to do
everything in the cloud.

It might make sense to look at your CRM application because you’re going to do an
upgrade of that application and get the Web-based version of it next time instead of
buying the upgrade for the local version. But you might keep your email in-house.

You might decide you want to do backup in the cloud because you’ve outgrown your
backup hardware and it’s time to replace it. Or maybe it’s time to replace all your tapes,
which doesn’t sound expensive but can be. Or you’re having too many backup issues
and the hardware is starting to fail. Maybe it’s time to change that one thing.

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An organization has to look at each application and decide if that app is right for the
cloud. It may be right, or it may not be right.

IT COMES DOWN TO DOING A COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS ON EACH APPLICATION
• What do you expect your usage to be?
• What do you expect your growth or shrinkage of that application is going to be?
• What do you expect the longevity of using that particular application or service
will be?
• Is it something that’s being “end-of-lifed,” or do you think there’s something new
coming around the corner?
• You may not want to go to a cloud-based version of the same thing you’re using
today if you think there’s another thing coming out next week that might be a
better solution.

LOOK AT EACH SENARIOS INDIVIDUALLY AND DO A BUSINESS ANALYSIS
Look at the following factors and figure out if it makes sense:
1. The one-time costs
2. The long-term costs
3. The monthly costs

Look at the criticality of each application to your business and look at who uses it. If it’s
a CRM application heavily used by a mobile sales force (rather than internal account
executives or customer service reps), it might make a lot more sense to use the cloud.

Look at each application and try to determine what the best thing is for your business.
Again, it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.

HERE ARE TWO EXAMPLES.
Example #1: ForeSite Technologies
We have an infrastructure today. We have servers, we have software and we own all
this equipment.

If we’re going to go and do our upgrade, we have a decision to make about whether
we’re going to go to the cloud or continue to do things locally, depending upon what
kind of service it is.

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If you don’t have that infrastructure, it’s an easier decision. You don’t have the legacy
applications or legacy infrastructure to deal with—you’re starting fresh.

You may decide that if you have rapid growth and a localized workforce, then moving
local might make sense at some point based upon your size of growth. But as a start-
up, you might want to conserve that start-up cash. You don’t know how things will turn
out, so you might spend your money on marketing to get your big boost as opposed to
spending it on hardware and software.
Example #2: Infrastructure overhaul
Another time to think about going to the cloud is when you’re going through an
infrastructure overhaul.

If you’re going to do a whole refresh of your technology, you might look at moving
everything to the cloud because at that point you decide you don’t want to invest in all
that hardware and software again. You just want somebody else to own it, and you can
use it and pay the subscription to it.

PART 1 CONDENSED:

• The cloud is nothing new; it’s been around for many years.
• Instead of buying and keeping equipment in your office, you can use a cloud
service to perform tasks you’d typically do in the office.
• Instead of keeping up with hardware fees year to year, you pay monthly
subscription fees.
• Start-ups, remote offices and rapidly growing businesses are prime targets for
cloud computing.
• The three main benefits of cloud computing for businesses are:
• The two main drawbacks of cloud computing for businesses are:
2. Subscription-based, reoccurring expenses

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BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING PT 2:3 PROBLEMS CLOUD SOLVES

In part two, we’ll look at three classic problems the cloud solves for many businesses.

Three business problems the cloud solves
When dealing with customers, ForeSite sees three problems the cloud solves for many
businesses. Cloud computing can help:
1. Reduce costs
2. Improve efficiencies
3. Handle unpredictable growth

Let’s see how each one of these factors plays out in a business.

1) REDUCE COSTS
Everybody wants us to try to drive down costs, especially in the greatest recession
since the Great Depression or this potential double dip. People are careful in how they
spend their money; they’re not only trying to drive down costs, they’re trying to defer
cash usage.

One of the biggest benefits cloud computing offers businesses is reduced support and
maintenance costs on the physical hardware and software. If you put your Exchange
email application in the cloud, you don’t have to pay a company to come in and take
care of updates on the server, update the latest patches and all the other things that
happen to the software and the hardware.

The reality is that those support and maintenance costs are built into the subscription
cost. Reducing costs for a business is one problem the cloud helps solve.

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2) IMPROVE EFFICIENCIES
The second thing that’s happening now is that people are trying to automate processes
that can help them create efficiencies in their businesses. Sometimes this reduces the
need to hire additional staff or it can allow companies to free up their current staff for
other purposes.

Let’s say you’re a bookkeeping company
And let’s say you have bookkeepers working for you at your clients’ locations all the
time. You could have your bookkeepers fill Excel spreadsheets and send their time in to
you, which you then type into QuickBooks and cut their paychecks.

Or ForeSite can create a web-based system where your bookkeepers can enter their
time online through the web-based system and have it feed directly into QuickBooks.
This system eliminates double entry. You instantly have the information to do your
accounting and your payroll.

Then there is the third problem that the cloud solves, unpredictable growth.

3) HANDLE UNPREDICTABLE GROWTH
Businesses aren’t sure how big they’re going to be. They could be the size they are
today, they could shrink or they could grow. Sometimes small changes in a business
climate can create a rapid change in business size.

When talking about creating a technology infrastructure, you need to put in a server.
The server needs to be so big and have so many processors and memory. And it needs
to handle the applications you deal with on a daily basis.

But how many users will you have?
If you don’t know how many users you’re going to have, it’s difficult to size that
equipment. Let’s say you’re a small organization. If you’re going to make a major
investment, you can probably install a server—hardware and labor—for around $10,000
- $12,000, possibly more.

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If that’s not going to be enough after a year because you don’t know where your growth
pattern is headed, you’re going to be real hesitant to say, “Oh, I only want to do that
when maybe I want to do the $20,000 one.” Well, now you’re twenty thousand dollars
out of your initial start-up cash.

If you don’t know which direction the business climate is headed, then you don’t know if
you’re going to cut ten people or add ten people. It could make a difference in the size
of the infrastructure you put in place.

THE BOTTOM LINE
When you put three triggers together—costs, efficiencies and growth—the cloud offers
several attractive business solutions.

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BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING PT 3: 3 MYTHS (AND TRUTHS)

When it comes to cloud computing for business, there are a few big myths floating
around that need to be cleared up.

In this section, we’ll look at the three myths surrounding cloud computing for business
and the truths behind them.

The three myths are:
1) Cloud computing is suitable for every business
2) Cloud computing is free
3) Cloud computing provides instant access to your data

MYTH #1: CLOUD COMPUTING IS SUITABLE FOR EVERY BUSINESS

Truth: The cloud is right for some businesses (and sometimes only some parts of
businesses).

The first thing you hear most often about the cloud is that it’s everybody’s answer to
everything—that the cloud is right for everybody and for every application—and frankly
it’s just not true.

ForeSite has found that the cloud is right for some businesses and sometimes for only
parts of businesses.

For example, if you have an application that’s going to be accessed by multiple people
from multiple locations and by people on the road, that might be a great application to
push up to the cloud. For applications that are accessed strictly by people in your office
(and the majority of the workforce is in a central location), you may not get the payback
by pushing that application up to the cloud.

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Additionally, if there are businesses that have a lot of legacy applications (some of the
traditionally larger businesses with applications that have been around for thirty or forty
years on large mainframes), they most likely aren’t moving to the cloud.

If people in those types of businesses want to start utilizing web-based application
technology, they’re doing one of two things:
1) They’re either getting a new application and completely rewriting from scratch
and migrating everything they have into a totally new space—not just moving
their application out to the web.
2) Or they’re setting up some sort of a terminal server so people can remotely
access these applications, but the applications themselves are still located in
their offices on major mainframes. Or they may just be accessed over the web
through these terminal servers or Citrix servers.

MYTH #2: CLOUD COMPUTING IS FREE

Truth: The reality is that there are some free services available via the web in the
cloud such as Google Apps and Google Mail.

Most cloud services are provided and designed primarily for individual users, not
commercial users. If there is a commercial version, it is usually not free (even if the
individual user version is free). Some of the backup services might have a free
individual user version so you can back up one gig of data to the cloud. But it’s
supposed to be for individual use, not for commercial use. And if you get beyond a gig,
they start charging you.

Marketing hype has people believing cloud services are free. Yes, there are free
services out there, but most of them are not for business purposes. The free services
for businesses (for commercial use) often come loaded with disclaimers about the
application provider’s limitations of liability with regard to the data, the uptime, the
service level agreement, etc. In short, they guarantee you nothing (or next to nothing).

If it’s not intended for commercial use, they’re not going to guarantee you 100% uptime
or 99.99% uptime. And they’re not going to guarantee you that the server won’t blow up
and you won’t lose your data.

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So if you’re looking for commercial use, most free cloud options are not really
applicable.

MYTH #3: CLOUD COMPUTING PROVIDES INSTANT ACCESS TO YOUR DATA

Truth: This is a semi-truth.

The reality is: anything you’re trying to do with the cloud requires a reliable Internet
connection from wherever you are—in your office, in your home or in a Starbucks.

The half untruth is: when you don’t have a reliable or secure Internet connection, based
upon the application, you have no access to your data. So it’s not even about slow
access to your data or limited access to your data—you have no access to your data.
You need to weigh how critical it is for your office or your business to be able to use that
data or application. If it is ultra-critical, you’ve got to have multiple backup, redundant
access lines to the Internet to make sure you have instant access.

What if you can’t get online?
In an office environment where the cloud is used heavily, we always recommend two
modes of access to the Internet.

You might have a commercial-grade cable modem that is fairly high speed. But then we
would also recommend a different provider that can put in something like a DSL line.
Even if you have a dedicated data line, such as a T-1 or a DS3, we recommend you
have a backup line from a different provider.

Is your business ready for cloud computing?

Find out in the next section, “Business Cloud Computing PT 4: Choosing a Cloud
Service Provider.”

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BUSINESS CLOUD COMPUTING PT 4: CHOOSING A SERVICE PROVIDER

Let’s recap a few key concepts before moving ahead into the final section.

While cloud computing solves several key challenges for many businesses, that doesn’t
mean a business should immediately jump into the cloud.

There are three key trigger points for when a business might consider using a cloud-
based service:
1. Starting up a new business
2. Looking at a major infrastructure overhaul of your servers, desktops, etc.
3. Rapidly growing business making scaling physical infrastructure more difficult
than scaling in the cloud

Those are three times when a business traditionally receives ROI from the cloud. They
are either not going to buy a lot more infrastructure to replace current infrastructure or
not going to buy infrastructure in the first place.

IN GENERAL, ARE THERE BUSINESSES NOT WELL SUITED FOR THE CLOUD?

While there are no hard and fast rules regarding who should or shouldn’t use cloud
computing, less optimal organizations for using the cloud are large brick-and-mortar
organizations, in particular those that:
• Have a centralized workforce
• Use legacy data systems on AS400s
• Use mainframe computers
• Use large policy processing systems

These businesses are typically very difficult to move into a cloud-based scenario
because there is a lot of hardware and structure that can be difficult to access from the
cloud.

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DON’T MOVE TO THE CLOUD JUST BECAUSE IT’S THERE

If an organization isn’t going to benefit by moving to the cloud, it’s not a good
organization for the cloud.

Look at what the standard business case would be, like any other type of business
evaluation. If there’s not going to be ROI from moving to the cloud, don’t do it. Don’t
move to the cloud just because the cloud exists.

This moves us into the final part of this e-book and raises the question:

WHAT SHOULD A BUSINESS LOOK FOR IN A COMPANY PROVIDING CLOUD
SUPPORT?

When it comes to choosing a cloud application provider or data center, there are three
challenges businesses need to consider:
1. Security standards
2. Your business standards
3. Experience

1) SECURITY STANDARDS
If an application is moving to the cloud, look at the security standards the data center
has, based on the requirements of your business.

Are you responsible for patient data, and do you have HIPAA requirements? Make sure
the data center’s security standards are HIPAA compliant. Same thing if you’re in the
financial industry. Make sure whatever type of data you’re going to be storing in the
cloud is properly protected, based on your legal standards.

2) YOUR BUSINESS STANDARDS
Make sure you are protected properly for your own business standards. Consider the
level of guaranteed uptime you need for your business.

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Check the service level agreement for uptime. Do they guarantee “five nines” of uptime?
Do they guarantee “two nines” of uptime? Is that enough? Start doing your “enough”
calculations on what only 99 percent uptime is—it could mean you’ll be down for a
couple of days straight. Is that going to be a big problem for your business?

3) EXPERIENCE
Look at the experience the provider has in supporting the types of applications you are
considering hosting.

If you’re going to be using their hosted exchange service with support of the different
types of mobile devices you have, you want to be certain this is something they do.

Finally, you want your service to be provided by the experts. You’re doing this to reduce
your downtime, reduce your overhead and reduce your involvement—you want it to be
seamless. Make sure the service has experience hosting the types of applications you
want to rely on in the cloud.

NEED HELP DETERMINING YOUR CLOUD-BASED NEEDS?

Deciding whether your business is a fit for the cloud requires looking at every
application that may move to the cloud. If this is something you’re not comfortable
doing, ForeSite can help.

We can help you understand which web-based versions are available for the types of
applications you’re using and for the type of Internet access you have. We can also help
with the types of redundancies that would be necessary for your business.

Many businesses are rapidly changing. ForeSite can help determine whether using a
cloud-based version of your client information app may be the way to go (as opposed to
many people accessing information on your internal network).

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It’s a matter of looking at each individual application and determining whether there’s a
business benefit for moving that application to the cloud. Remember—it’s not an all-or-
nothing scenario.

WHAT DOES FORESITE DETERMINE WHEN WORKING WITH A BUSINESS?

The following list is a partial snapshot of what ForeSite looks at when determining if an
application is right for the cloud or not:

1) Where are the users of the application located?
Are they scattered all over?
Or are they located in a central location?

2) Is your user base growing or shrinking?
Or is it remaining constant?
What do you think your user base is going to look like over time?

3) What kind of bandwidth requirements does your application have?
If you decide you want to share data and there’s a lot of bandwidth necessary, can your
infrastructure support that? We would evaluate whether your current infrastructure can
support that app or not. Then you can compare this against the ROI of moving the
application out to the cloud.

4) What is the track record of the provider?
Does the particular application you will be using over the cloud have a proven track
record of being used in the cloud?

You don’t want to be a beta site. There’s nothing worse than trying to move an intricate
application out into the cloud and having it be nothing but problems (like printing, for
instance) or trying to deal with different levels of remote access.

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If your business is going to rely on the cloud, you want to make sure that it’s going to
work consistently.

5) Evaluate the current state of your network infrastructure
We would also look at the age of your servers. We’d look at your technology plan for
replacing certain items and determine if and where we might be able to get some ROI
for the business by phasing in different types of application movements.

Regardless of where the app or the hardware lives, we are still the IT people who
understand it, who fight with it when it’s down, who make sure that it’s doing what you
need for your business, who make sure that your users have what they need.

Just because you moved into the cloud, you still have a business to run. You don’t have
time to be messing around with cloud-based issues.

If you used cloud-based accounting software, you wouldn’t fire your CFO. Just because
you have cloud-based services doesn’t mean you eliminate the IT department. You still
have IT needs; you just don’t necessarily have as much need for hardware or software
support in your office.

IF YOU DO MOVE TO THE CLOUD, HOW SAFE IS YOUR DATA?

Being concerned about data safety is critical for any business using the cloud—after all,
we’re talking about customer and company information. A business wants to have its
arms around the data and feel good knowing that it’s secure.

With a reputable service provider, your data is as secure (if not more so) when hosted in
a cloud-based scenario as it would be if it were hosted in your office (with you backing
up data by taking tapes off-site in your briefcase).

As long as you’re working with a reputable service provider and they have the right
security standards, there’s no reason to be concerned that your data is less secure on
the Internet. The data will be stored on a secured server, and it will be accessed over a
secure pipeline—as long as everything is configured properly.
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Data isn’t at any greater risk of being compromised than it would be when you’re
emailing. In fact, it should be even more secure than standard email because standard
email is plain (unencrypted) text.

SUMMARY

If your business is considering moving its infrastructure to the cloud, remember to check
the service provider’s security standards, confirm your own business standards and
assess the provider’s experience hosting the types of applications you’re considering
moving to the web

Is your organization hesitating about
moving specific applications to the cloud?

Do you know if the cloud
provides the ROI your business needs?

ForeSite specializes in helping businesses understand the ins and outs of cloud-based
issues.

FREE CLOUD APPLICATION FEASIBILITY REVIEW

If you’d like to learn more about the cloud and whether it’s suitable for your business
application needs, we’ll provide your organization with an initial review—free of charge.

Call us at 860-528-1100 to learn more, request your review online.

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About ForeSite Technologies
Headquartered in East Hartford, CT, ForeSite Technologies has been designing
solutions and troubleshooting problems for computers, networks and websites, since
1997. We are committed to providing personalized customer service, working side-by-
side with our clients and producing practical yet insightful solutions to fit a wide range of
business needs, from traditional to creative.

About The Author

Thomas Clifford is a content marketing writer and copywriter specializing in online
business-to-business copy.
Tom helps professional service firms generate and nurture leads, educate customers
and reduce buying process risks through helpful and valuable content. His approach to
communicating business messages is simple: keep it “hype-free”.
A conversational and informational tone-with just a sprinkling of sales copy when
needed- is Tom’s signature style.
Tom is a regular contributing writer for Content Marketing Institute, the world’s leading
content marketing resource. He graduated from Loyola University in New Orleans with
a BA in communications. You can read more of Tom’s work at Content Marketing
Institute. Contact Tom. Connect with Tom on LinkedIn.

Contact Us
ForeSite East Hartford Office
99 East River Drive, 7th Floor
East Hartford, CT 06108
P: (860) 528-1100
F: (860) 528-2100
ForeSite Worcester Office
4 Ash Street
Worcester, MA 01608
P: (508) 767-1110

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The information in this e-book is intended for general education purposes only. It should not be
construed as professional advice. Before making any changes to your IT infrastructure, you
should consult an IT professional. This information is the property of ForeSite Technologies, Inc.
and should only be used for the intended purpose. It shall not be resold or repurposed for any
reason.
Copyright 2011 ForeSite Technologies, Inc.

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