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Preferred has been serving the Tinley Park area since 1991, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Don’t Migrate to the Cloud Unless You Consider This

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Vince Arden

Friday, January 31 2020

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We hear a lot about the benefits of moving your business to the cloud. It can reduce that big expense on new infrastructure and the ongoing management costs. The cloud can increase the effectiveness of your IT budget. It can add functionality and increase user satisfaction.

Businesses are rapidly moving all or portions of their IT to the cloud, and for a lot of good reasons, but before you do, it is important to remember the following:

The Cloud Is Someone Else’s Computer

Depending on how you look at it, this is either a pro or a con. If you are hosting your data in the cloud, you are essentially entrusting someone else to manage your data. That might mean that the data is in better hands - a professional data center with top-notch security, climate control, near-perfect uptime, and certified staff to manage the hardware, software, and network equipment is usually a big step up from most small business management.

That said, anyone can sell cloud storage. Anyone can lease out a portion of a data center, or keep a shared server on their premise and sell you cloud computing resources from it.

Before you pull the trigger, you’ll want to understand what kinds of SLAs (service level agreement) you have, how emergencies are handled, and make sure you are getting the computing resources you need.

Cloud Migrations Can Be Disruptive

Migrating your infrastructure to the cloud could be a fairly straightforward process, or it could require a lot of time and labor. Don’t get fooled by the low monthly price - there will often be some legwork to move the data, configure the environment, train your users, and make tweaks.

That migration time doesn’t mean you don’t have access to your data, but the transition could take time, and anytime users need to change their regular everyday processes, it can slow things down.

When Done Right, It’s Worth It

Today, most businesses can benefit from at least some degree of cloud computing, whether it be some basics like hosted email and document management (like G Suite or Office 365), data backups, or a line-of-business app, to moving most of your infrastructure to a hosted environment.

The problem most businesses run into is when a cloud implementation isn’t planned out properly, or is handled poorly.

We’d love to talk to you about the cloud. Give us a call at 708-781-7110 and set up an appointment!

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About the author

Vince Arden

Vince Arden is the founder and President of Preferred Communication Systems. He is a graduate of DeVry University with over 30 years of experience in the IT industry. In addition to providing leadership in sales, marketing, project management, and service delivery at Preferred, Vince provides Virtual CIO-level services for the 4th-largest Realtor Association in the nation and to an Inc. 500 fastest growing company. He has been interviewed by industry publications like Redmond magazine, CRN News, and Continuum for his expertise related to cloud computing and the managed IT services industry. He also lends his voice as a contributing author for the Cloud Business Review.

His core purpose is to, "Help people achieve their greatest potential in work and L.I.F.E." He passionately works toward making this a reality in every aspect of life, including his areas of expertise, such as thought leadership, ideation, communication, team building, and Servant Leadership. Vince models building strong relationships, both with his team at Preferred and with his clients. He strives to build a network of people he can embolden to work smarter, so that they may ultimately be able to live better.

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