Sometimes serendipity just walks up and slaps you in the face. My last blog post, Flirting With Business Continuity, was about the importance of preparing your small business for disaster. I had already decided to follow up that post with a discussion about the value of using hosted or cloud-based services for such continuity.
In the interim, my new Windows 7 computer arrived, and I ventured into the netherworld of setting it up. While I have Web access, I’m still struggling to get Outlook configured properly. I don’t know about you, but when my e-mail isn’t working properly, I have that same kind of discombobulated feeling you get after a transoceanic flight.
As it happens, I have several clients that have asked me to use hosted e-mail addresses when communicating with their clients. Doing this makes their small businesses look bigger, so I comply. Up until recently, I considered it a major hassle. Guess what? Those are now the easiest e-mail accounts to work with. My own point proven experientially.
Security consultant Kenneth Van Wyk made the same point in Computerworld last week.
“I’ve also found great value in using cloud services as part of my Plan B for mobile disaster recovery. Whenever I travel on business, I always keep an encrypted copy of the stuff I need for that trip out on the MobileMe cloud. If my laptop is stolen or suffers a catastrophic failure, I know I can go out and buy a new one pretty quickly, and then load the mission-critical data I need from the cloud service.”
As network consultant Howard Marks pointed out in an InformationWeek article last month, “The introduction of new technologies, notably cloud-based storage services … have made effective disaster recovery accessible to a wider swath of businesses than ever before.”
But while the term “cloud disaster recovery” is becoming more common, my e-mail experience shows that the capabilities of hosted services goes beyond disaster recovery into the arena of plain old productivity. Conceivably, even if your physical facility were destroyed, you could sign on to your applications (and your data) through the Web browser of a new computer, and off you’d go without missing a beat. There is the question of connectivity, but I’ve found that, unlike my younger days, if you have a laptop and a Starbucks, or even a smartphone and a cell tower, you can still be productive.
There is a whole other argument about hosted services that relates to reducing capital expenses in favor of operational expenses (the latter being potentially cheaper), but I’ll save that for another day. From the standpoint of continuity, if you want to be able to keep your business going no matter what, no matter where, no matter when, consider the productivity payoff of hosted applications.
What hosted applications or cloud based services do you use for your business? Share your experiences with us here. Please comment below. Thanks!
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About the Author, Howard Baldwin
