Public Cloud? Private Cloud? Why Not Both!

In a world where technology is continuously being improved upon to suit the needs of the modern business, your organization’s needs can quickly (and drastically) change. The need for cloud services grows more apparent with each passing day, primarily because it has so much to offer for a small business. Granted, talking about the cloud and implementing it are two entirely different things. So, it's important that business owners ask, "What can the cloud do for my organization?"

We’ve mentioned the many benefits of both the private and public clouds before. Private clouds offer control and administrative privileges that the public cloud might not, while the public cloud is known for its ability to provide hands-off cloud management with all of the benefits, at the cost of some of those customizable security solutions and administrator control. However, today, we want to discuss the importance of the hybrid cloud, and what it can offer your small business.

What is a Hybrid Cloud?
The hybrid cloud environment takes all of the advantages of the public and private cloud solutions and combines them in one convenient platform that’s designed to work for your business’s specific needs. Most businesses that take advantage of the public cloud do so because the responsibility of maintenance falls on the cloud provider’s shoulders, rather than themselves. By combining this with the dynamic administrator privileges provided by the private cloud, you get, more or less, the hybrid cloud solution.

How a Hybrid Cloud Can Grow Your Business
Your IT budget, according to Forbes, is typically comprised of several different avenues. Typically, operational expenses (costs that are spent on keeping your organization functioning smoothly) account for well over half of your IT budget, but these expenses don’t have any direct correlation to how much profit you’re bringing in. Other parts of your expenditure include your ability to grow through use of new applications and productivity best practices, as well as taking advantage of analytics that allow your business to cater to new markets. While these later two have the potential to be exceptionally helpful for your organization’s profit margin, organizations don’t typically spend more than a combined third of their budget on these important aspects.

The primary issue here is that businesses are trying to spend most of their money on avenues that don’t yield a potential for profits. Thanks to the hybrid cloud and managed service providers, SMBs now have an immediate way of minimizing their operational costs. Managed IT services allow your organization to outsource key responsibilities, like email hosting or technology maintenance, to a third-party. While this might sound like an immediate detriment, it actually saves your organization valuable revenue that can be spent elsewhere. As a small business, the likelihood that you have an internal IT staff whose sole purpose is maintaining mission-critical systems is slim. This means that you have your other staff members taking valuable time out of their day-to-day responsibilities in an effort to keep your technology afloat (or you are paying someone else to do it).

Furthermore, the hybrid cloud is maintained by the managed service provider, allowing you to focus more on internal operations rather than IT maintenance. Moving other technologies to the cloud, like your desktop and server infrastructure, can also prove beneficial, as you’ll have less workstations and computing materials hogging resources like electricity and office space. Furthermore, the hybrid cloud allows your business to easily test new technology in an instant. You can deploy software solutions to any amount of employees quickly and efficiently, rather than spend time installing them physically on all in-house machines.

Either way, the important thing to keep in mind and take away from this article is that the cloud is a dynamic and powerful solution that your business should be aware of, be it through the public cloud, the private cloud, or even the hybrid cloud. Horne & Benik has the knowledge and experience to help your business understand your current cloud computing needs and help you put together an IT budget that’s designed to save you money on operational expenses and free up space for innovative new solutions. Give us a call at (603) 499-4400 to learn more.