Scheidydude's Blog

OK, so now you really know what you spend, in salary and time, maintaining and updating your technological infrastructure.  You want to re-coup some of that expense and re-focus your efforts. 

So what does it take to move to the Cloud?  This is a loaded question.  First you have to decide what you want to move.  Simply saying “IT” is the wrong answer.  IT, which stands for Information Technology (if you don’t know that why are you reading this?), encompasses more than just any one service.  It’s more than just that button we click to check our email.  It’s the files we save, the phones we use, the voice mail we listen too, the numerous applications we run hundreds of times a day without a second thought to how they work or where they reside.  So saying “move our IT to the Cloud” could easily cost more time, effort, and money than could ever be saved.  No, each sub-department of your IT (and each sub-sub-department, depending on how big your IT requirements are) is another project that should be considered, individually, before deciding to move it to the cloud.

Even after you’ve decided what to move to the cloud, there are still costs associated with the actual move itself.  There is no magic button to press and “poof” you’re in the Cloud.  There are different criteria for each IT resource that you want to move to the Cloud.  Email has to be migrated and client software updated to recognize the new servers.  Other servers on the Internet have to know that your email domain has moved.  Files have to be migrated and drive mappings updated or web-access setup.  Backup procedures have to be defined and tested, and re-tested.  Permissions, for all of these, have to be assigned.  Domain trusts setup so each user doesn’t have to authenticate to every new resource.  And the hardest of all, users have to be trained.  Everything they’ve done, everything they’ve learned, has just changed.  And like most small-businesses, time is money, schedules are tight, and people miss training sessions.

So each resource that you want to move to the cloud may require a separate project for that move.  And once it is moved, there are still more costs associated with maintaining your existence in the Cloud.

I can hear that collective “WHAT, I moved most of my hard resources to the Cloud.  I reduced my staff or re-focused team members so they could add more value to our core business.  And now you tell me I still have to spend time and money just to stay in the Cloud.”  Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.  By moving to the Cloud, you were able to shuffle resources (people) and reduce expenditures (hardware/software) so that you could essentially increase your bottom line.  But just because your “In the Cloud” doesn’t mean your IT costs are completely gone.  While your IT staff might not have to test and deploy new hardware and software, patch or repair servers, they will still need to be trained on how to manage the new Cloud based resources (adding and removing users, mailboxes and file shares, backing up and restoring data).  These tasks still exist, they are just done differently.  And they will need to coordinate with your service providers for when upgrades, patches and repairs are required.

OK, now uncross your eyes, take a deep breadth, and think of daisies in the field, and relax.  Are you relaxed?  Good.  Now stop that and get back to work.

So let me list the Pros and Cons for moving to the Cloud, as I see them.

PROS:
Reduced staff (I prefer re-focused staff)
Reduced in-house hardware (server) requirements
Reduced power consumption
Reduced property insurance
Ability to dynamically allocate and/or move resources.

CONS
Training End Users
Training IT Support Staff
Confined to Vendor Schedules
Confined to Vendor Contracts
Bandwidth Constraints

Yes, I added a few items that I haven’t covered.  Some are obvious, others not so much.  In my next post I’ll go into a little more depth on the “not so much” group.