Small Businesses Going to the Cloud: Three Top Considerations

Grazed from Cisco News Room. Author: Anne Field.

Small businesses, of course, can save a ton of money and gain a lot of efficiencies by going to the cloud. But getting there isn’t necessarily that simple. Fact is, one size does not fit all. " A startup marketing company, for example, may take a very different path from an established medical practice," says Igal Rabinovich, CEO of IT Help Central, a White Plains, NY consulting firm. Here are some key considerations to take into account before making the move.

Create a migration plan.

Best is not to make the change willy-nilly, particularly if you think you’ll be moving many applications to the cloud. That means having a roadmap for how you’ll proceed, introducing applications one at a time and testing each one before deciding to go ahead with it and then moving onto the next. You also need to include a training period for employees to learn how to use each application…

The length and complexity of your plan, of course, depends on the number of applications you have, the size of your business and how distributed your workforce is, according to Ron Braatz, president of LiftOff Learning, an IT consulting firm. Introducing, say, an e-mail system to a highly distributed workforce would take longer than it would for a company where everyone works in the same office.

A plan can do more than help your move to the cloud go smoothly, however. It can also provide a larger strategic boost. Jill Billhorn, vice president, small business at CDW, a Vernon Hills, Ill., IT consulting firm recalls a fast-growing client, an exercise business that was opening up locations at a rapid pace. At first, the approach was to launch new venues and bring IT staff in on the plan only shortly before opening. “It ended up that IT had to spend much of their time putting out fires as a result," says Billhorn. Eventually, the IT group decided to start scrutinizing the expansion plan for the following year and form a blueprint for introducing appropriate applications. As a result, as the business grew, they were able to operate more judiciously and effectively, and that helped overall expansion, according to Billhorn…

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