The benefits of being in the cloud for small businesses

Our team often works from home and also need to share information with each other. As the team is growing we needed a robust solution. After being introduced to our cloud-solutions provider, SIRE Technology, we found an IT partner that we could trust to create a great solution for us. There are plenty of options out there, so do your research and find the right one for you.

Why we use the cloud

We found that when we upgraded employee’s laptops it took a long time installing all the different applications that we use. By hosting the applications that we use on the cloud we could very quickly set up a new laptop and access the applications and data that we needed.

Furthermore, by using a sensible folder structure on our shared data drive we can share information with each other and easily cover for others when they are on holiday or sick. We can also restrict access to certain folders if it is sensitive and not for view by everyone.

Data security

There are various levels of security to gain access to the cloud, as we need to ensure that client’s information is safe and secure. Our provider also regularly runs backups of our data, so that we can ensure continuity.

Scalability

An essential requirement for us is that we can easily add new employees to the solution and new applications that we introduce. This has been incredibly easy to do and means that we have full scalability for our business.

Snow days

Being able to work seamlessly from home or other offices, means that we don’t have any down time from “snow days” or other unexpected days when we can’t work in the office. This also gives us full coverage in case of disaster recovery, as even if all our laptops were blown up in the office, SIRE could quickly get us working again.

By using an all-round solution that reduces our worry and risk about IT, guarantees the safety of our data, grows and develops in response to their changing business needs and is affordable, with costs that scale as their need grows, we are able to focus first and foremost on our customers

Top five tips:

1. Find an IT provider that you trust
2. Ensure that your solution is future-proof
3. Make sure that security is sufficient
4. Setup a folder structure for data so information is easy to find
5. Run regular backups