Break Up With Your Servers

Many business decision-makers and leaders hesitate to adopt cloud technologies because they simply aren’t confident about the basics of cloud!

The true definition has become…well…cloudy!

A massive misconception about the cloud is that it’s just ‘up there,’ a single, nebulous mass of data with no true geographical home. If that were true, you’d be wise to hesitate about adopting cloud hosting.

However, that is simply not the case!

‘The Cloud’ is actually a multitude of smaller clouds, places where your data is hosted on real servers in real-life data centres all over the world and accessed over Wi-Fi.

It can be very reassuring to walk into your server room in the office and see the flashing lights reminding you that everything is humming along nicely. But could that be a false security?

On-site IT infrastructures—especially if you’re a small to mid-sized business—are extremely susceptible to security breaches, are costly to maintain and are difficult to integrate with newer technologies.

In fact, recent data breaches like the WannaCry ransomware attack which crippled the NHS were of vulnerabilities in legacy systems, not cloud-hosted environments.

In areas of cost, reputation and risk, legacy systems are putting your business in danger!

But, why trust the cloud data centres?

That’s a key question to ask.

Put simply, it’s because the data centres used by cloud computing providers can far outpace the processing power and availability of on-site servers. 

For example, SysGroup hosts in world-class data centres across the UK including Next Generation Data and LDEX, with future-facing and exacting standards for security and availability. They include:

• Military-grade fencing with 24/7 physical security patrols
• Dedicated power substations to ensure 100% uptime
• Enough computing power for any size workload
• Tier 3+ hardware with UPS (uninterruptible power supply)
• Comprehensive, 24-hour network monitoring

They are incredibly compliant too, including security credentials like:

• ISO/IEC 27001:2013 (Information Security Management)
• ISO 22301:2012 (Business Continuity Management)
• PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards)
• ISO 9001:2015 (Quality Management system)
• ISO 50001:2011 (Energy Management)
• BS OHSAS 18001:2007 (Occupational Health and Safety Management)

How much is it costing you to keep the lights on?

According to IDC research, the relative performance of IT assets like servers declines rapidly after year 3, down to 59% of capacity by year 7.

Additionally, by their 5th year, the expenses of maintaining and supporting a server increase by approximately 148%! 

Not only are these servers costly to replace, your application/network performance and ability to innovate rely heavily on having sufficient computing power!

An ageing on-site IT infrastructure could become your biggest roadblock to success.

Building an IT network to rival these data centres would be impossible for most SMEs. This is perhaps the most significant benefit of cloud computing: the ability to host your IT environment in data centres like these for a fraction of the cost, with no maintenance required from you.

It might be time to break up with your on-premises servers.

But there's no need to worry, because choosing cloud hosting gives you the computing power and flexibility that was previously only available to the biggest enterprises with dedicated IT budgets and strategies.

Buying into cloud just might be the best business decision you'll ever make.