EuroCloud founder Phil Wainewright claims there are advantages to be had in moving some of your firm’s operations online.
Businesses might benefit from using document scanning services to get their information stored digitally, meaning they can keep it themselves or even place it in the cloud.
According to Phil Wainewright, vice chairman of EuroCloud, keeping data online can have some major plus-points.
For instance, firms with IT departments will find that their tech experts have more time on their hands to do other things if they do not have to manage the demands being placed on their in-house server.
Having online or offsite backups also means they do not have to stress about what will happen if the company’s computer infrastructure becomes damaged in a fire or other disaster.
"I think that a lot of small businesses don’t even have in-house IT staff to start off with and so the choice is ‘do I maintain this myself or do I hire in outside expertise?’ and not having that cost is a big advantage," Mr Wainewright said.
"But even if you do have in-house staff, I think that paying people to just keep servers running and to do software upgrades and all the day-to-day maintenance is really money that would be better spent on being able to improve the system and get new functionality out of it."
The expert added that companies with IT experts should encourage them to focus their knowledge on working with online applications and getting the most out of what the firm uses.
"I think that to talk about cloud as managed hosting is probably the wrong vocabulary, because if you use a cloud application like Salesforce or GoToMeeting for meetings – it’s not just managed hosting, you’re getting a complete application that is a complete service in the cloud," he claimed.
"It’s not like taking software and just running it on a server that someone else manages for you, it’s actually getting the whole application delivered and running."