Many small biz owners are still on the fence about taking their biz operations to the clouds. In a recent interview with Michal Lev-Ram for CnnMoney.com, Google’s enterprise chief Dave Girouard provides some compelling reasons for small biz owners to reconsider their stance. Most small biz owners cite security and uptime as their biggest resistance to the cloud here’s what Girouard had to say about both issues:
“Our belief is that your data is safer inside Google than it is inside your own computers. But we are doing all sorts of things to make sure our user data is protected.”
In regards to cloud system’s uptime, Girouard stated:
“There's no system that's prefect and no company that's perfect and we certainly aren't. In 2010 Gmail had 99.984% uptime.”
His statements got me wondering if those small biz owners that were resisting the cloud had procedures in place to protect their data and if their procedures had a 100% uptime. I posed the question of the cloud in one of my accounting discussion boards to get small biz accountants’ take on the matter and many of them were still resisting the cloud. One accountant even said that she used a portable hard drive that she took back and forth with her to the office.
Although the portable drive is a great way to save and backup your mission critical data, it should only be a small step in your backup and data warehousing plan. Which brings me to another point Girouard made in the article that cloud based companies are more agile than their “old school” counterparts. When asked about the advantages of Google’s cloud services versus those of other major software vendors, Girouard stated that since they are a 100% web company it is easier for them to adapt to the changes in the marketplace as they happen.
This is true for any business. Even a small business can be more nimble than their competitors if they build their business infrastructure in the cloud. Feel free to read the CNNMoney.com article and draw your own conclusions and opinions and post them as a response to this blog post. Would love to hear your thoughts.
The Tech Accountant
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