Boy - you'd have to be living under a rock - or at least have skipped some football on TV the past year or two - to not have heard the term "cloud computing." All the ads from technology companies are promoting "the cloud"...like it was the 2nd coming of sliced bread....and most non-techies haven't got the slightest idea about the cloud.
What is it anyway?
In it's simplest form, cloud computing is nothing more than a computer server or platform, that is handled by somebody, somewhere (hopefully in a quality data center). That's it. Simple right?
That's a pretty broad use case - so what is it you want from the cloud?
- Do you need a hosted website? That's cloud.
- Do you need a hosted mail server? That's cloud.
- Do you want an e-commerce / crm / portal site? That's cloud.
- Do you want to avoid having your own general purpose server - store & share files, use your Xtuple database? That's cloud.
- Google docs / Amazon / iTunes - those are also cloud.
Our partners work as technology advisors to their clients as well as their technology provider. Fully 99% of our clients are NOT yet on the cloud - or only partially there with a website and email but they're always asking us about this "cloud thing" and whether it's something they should be doing - and the answer is a resounding "maybe"....like every other business decision, it depends on lots of factors.
Cloud is a way to try out some new technology with a small investment. We can setup a fully functional database server for xTuple use in literally a few minutes on our cloud service - that part of the technology is terrific for guys like us.
It's great for conserving capital - monthly usage and support instead of wages and servers and IT staff. It can expand and contract as you need - for example we can double the RAM and storage available - or if needed go smaller - with a few minutes of effort.
Cloud based servers are all remotely available all the time - no special communications needed, no special services. It's just there.
Not all clouds are the same
There are real differences though with cloud services that are critical - not every service is the same and the differences are important!
1 - Who owns your data?
We had a partner with the unfortunate task of helping one of their (now) xTuple clients move from a really well known, large Web-based ERP system. First year was very reasonable, but when they got their annual increase for the 2nd year services of over $15,000 - they thought they'd move...but then learned a hard lesson - that the service provider license simply says "don't pay, we shut you off"...and "print your reports"...
A business' database is their lifeblood...might be the biggest asset you have...think of the accumulated cost of labor, for all those invoices, checks, bills...what do you mean "print it out"....
2 - What do you mean I can't use my own data?
A common request from our clients is to generate simple reports, or can we make a fresh customer address list for some holiday cards or promotion - always ask - can I access my data? Can I get a copy to use for my own purposes? What do I do if you go out of business?
If you can't get your data, if you can't see your data - you can be held hostage, so be careful.
In summary - we really like the cloud. We can do things with the cloud in minutes - set up a business intelligence reporting engine - for very modest monthly costs, that would require thousands of dollars of servers and setup.
You still need to have good business process practices and procedures. You still will need to actually use your ERP system - but you can do it with the confidence that you're not over paying for things you don't need or want, and that you can leverage the resources of a large professional staff, but only pay for the pennies that you're using.
It's not for every purpose, but it's giving business the chance to really leverage technology, without big up front or long term costs. It won't make your pictures better, it can't make your stick figure drawings the Mona Lisa...but you sure can tell where your money and inventory are at 3:00 a.m....while you're on vacation....