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Did you see that national news story where a small business server was down for several hours, resulting in lost revenue, disrupted communications and hampered productivity? Of course you didn’t – that’s because the only outages that make front pages headlines these days are those of the major cloud players. If it’s not Microsoft, Google or Amazon, it’s not news.
November 4, 2013
3 Min Read
By Michael Brown 1
Did you see that national news story where a small business server was down for several hours, resulting in lost revenue, disrupted communications and hampered productivity? Of course you didn’t – that’s because the only outages that make front pages headlines these days are those of the major cloud players. If it’s not Microsoft, Google or Amazon, it’s not news.
These stories have led many businesses – particularly small business, concerned with the impact of downtime on their operations – to conclude that cloud technology is far more prone to outages than the on-premise alternative; that it’s the riskier option. As a result, they may opt for on-premise solutions despite knowing that cloud technology is generally more cost-effective over the long haul. For them, the cost of a downtime in the cloud is greater than the cost of maintaining an on-site server.
Of course, on-premise solutions also suffer downtime – more downtime, in fact – it’s just that most of us never hear about it (hence the downtime myth of cloud technology). Unlike many of your prospects and clients, you know that cloud technology is almost always more reliable than on-premise solutions. You know that SLAs promising 99.9 percent uptime are actually met and you know that most of the concerns with the cloud are based on false assumptions.
The key is convincing them of this. So here are a few tips and points of emphasize to help you persuade your clients to move to the cloud:
Response time and control: Many businesses that refuse to entertain cloud solutions do so over the perceived lack of control it affords. They want their systems close to their operations. But what good is control without expertise and the ability to respond quickly? In the event of an outage, wouldn’t it be better to have a team working to get things back up online, as opposed to a lone IT administrator? Cloud vendors have invested a lot of resources in ensuring uptime, and their brand is one the line, so you can always expect to be back online as soon as possible.
Total cost of ownership: Generally speaking, the shelf-life of an on-premise server is about 5 to 7 years max for a small business. Because of this somewhat long duration, many businesses fail to account for the hardware costs they will incur over time. Not only will they need to be replaced, but the transition itself is costly as well. In the meantime, there are all sorts of “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” costs, including electricity bills, maintenance, bandwidth requirements and others. These small costs add up over time, but that's not so with the cloud.
It’s not an all-or-nothing decision: There is no grey area when it comes to on-premise solutions. They are on-premise and nowhere else. Cloud-based file sharing, on the other hand, can often augment on-premise options by storing data on remote or on-site servers. Many small businesses that move operations to the cloud do so in phases, so it’s important to remind them that cloud file sharing doesn’t mean they need to abandon all of their on-premise boxes.
There are a lot of myths surrounding cloud technology, but if you know your stuff, the downtime myth won’t be one that costs you business.
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