Cloud Computing has been a hot term in the recent past. There are so many services that can be offered through or hosted in the cloud that many small/medium-sized businesses are unsure of where to start.
A wonderful example of utilizing cloud services to cut costs, increase reliability and performance is to follow the lead of seven Colorado counties.
According to the report, Pueblo County, Colorado employed the talents of their existing IT department to write custom programs for county assessor and treasurer services.
In 2008, six other counties in Colorado signed up to use these same programs, all hosted out of the Pueblo County cloud. All seven of the counties were facing rising software and hardware costs before turning to these hosted solutions.
Pueblo County is currently predicting a $200,000 profit from these services, and is using the funds to update their own software and hardware. Pueblo County didn’t see success without a cost, though. The code was rewritten six times in one year to accommodate each County’s setup.
All seven counties are pleased with this cloud based solution, especially because they are saving money on software and hardware costs, while still using an enhanced product.
Several other State and City governments are following suit. In October, 2009, The City of Los Angeles announced that they would be adopting Google Apps. and hosting 30,000 email accounts through the Google cloud.
The State governments of Utah and Michigan are also planning to create cloud services that can be utilized by other local governments within their states, much like the Colorado example.
And what about your small/medium business or organization, how you can harness the energy of the cloud? Start by thinking about files or systems that could be centrally located. Hosting these in the cloud can encourage collaboration between your employees, clients and vendors.
If your business would like more information on cloud services, don’t hesitate to contact us.