{"id":2732,"date":"2016-04-28T16:27:14","date_gmt":"2016-04-28T23:27:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/?p=2732"},"modified":"2016-04-28T16:27:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-28T23:27:14","slug":"moving-your-small-business-to-the-cloud-avoid-common-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.poly.com\/moving-your-small-business-to-the-cloud-avoid-common-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving your small business to the cloud? Avoid common mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"
Is your small business in the cloud<\/a> or is it heading in that direction?\u00a0 Many small businesses are moving some or all of their operations to the cloud in order to enable remote and mobile <\/a>workers to access company information and services from anywhere and to save on IT and infrastructure costs. By 2020, 78 percent of U.S. small businesses will have fully adopted cloud computing compared to the 37 percent already \u201cin the cloud,\u201d according to a 2014 report<\/a> from Intuit and Emergent Research.<\/p>\n When it’s time to move your small business to the cloud, make sure to do the appropriate planning to get the results you want. For starters, you\u2019ll want to decide what applications and services you need to support your team in and out of the office. You can choose from such popular applications as online storage and sharing, email, online meeting and conferencing, and document collaboration and note-taking.\u00a0 You also can boost operations with payroll and invoicing applications. When it comes to deployment, you may want to move your applications and services to the cloud over time, starting with the ones that are most critical and adding more as your operational and customer requirements change.<\/p>\n You\u2019ll also need to make a decision about what type of cloud platform is most suitable for your needs: public, private or hybrid.<\/p>\n Once you\u2019ve done sufficient planning and determined what applications and services you need to move to the cloud and the type of platform that best suits your needs, there still are other considerations or mistakes to avoid that could cost your business or damage your clients. Some things to factor into your decision-making include:<\/p>\n Performance:<\/strong> Your cloud computing needs will undoubtedly grow over time as your business grows. As an example, you will have more employees using the system or there may be peak demand times during the day. Another performance issue has to do with scalability of your applications to support additional business. \u00a0Bottom line, you need to constantly monitor the performance of your cloud computing services to make sure they are keeping up with your needs.<\/p>\n Security:<\/strong> Securing your small business data isn\u2019t only important to make sure your small business remains operational; there is some client data that you are required to protect by law. As you evaluate cloud computing providers, find out what precautions, such as encryption and firewalls, they have to protect data from security breaches and what measures they take for their own onsite security and protection against natural disasters. Ask how soon you can expect to be notified if there is a data breach.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\n