Tech Lover 9

Cloud computing has been around since almost 1994, yet clients still have doubts about this technology. This is quite understandable, since many people still believe that the world will end in 2012, a software bug can destroy time and Mac doesn’t have any glitches. Judging from the common attitude towards high-tech products around the world, it seems obvious that cloud-based services still feel a bit deceptive for the general public. I am here to prove them wrong. Cloud computing is a great technological platform that will potentially help all kinds of businesses, both big and small.
Among the main fears, I would underline the following:

• The Cloud is very expensive.
• My data shouldn’t travel outside my company.
• Cloud is unreliable.

These are just a few of the reasons some of my clients named, while we were negotiating a deal. The main reason why people are afraid of cloud platforms is because they don’t really understand them. That is why many small business owners, managers and IT-specialists consider SaaS-products unreliable and dangerous. To destroy all possible prejudices against cloud computing one should just study the market.

If all cloud-products are really useless and even harmful for your business then how come there are so many cloud-based solutions. Dropbox, Carbonite, Amazon, HP flood the market with their services. Hundreds of independent companies like TeamWox, Dropbox provide customizable managing solutions. Apple builds big server farms all around US to host terabytes of data users upload to iCloud. All those people work with cloud, millions of clients use such platforms every day. If all those services are so dangerous, than how do all those companies continue to work? The potential client should understand that no one in his right mind will try to sell or give away a product that is potentially unsafe.

One can understand small businesses who do not want to go into the cloud. They are giving the most valuable assets – their data, their clients, their products. To help the client adapt to outside content storage, the cloud-provider could use a special step-by-step strategy. Let them migrate slowly, giving away one part of their infrastructure after another:

• Backup
• Disaster Recovery
• Hybrid Cloud
• Data Processing

The most obvious way to help the customer to understand the advantages of the cloud is to give back up service. Use the cloud for backups and storing your archives – the materials one does not use very often. This way the client could get adjusted to the cloud services and learn how to work with them. They will soon find out that the whole back-up process is very easy and works seamlessly. One can even start using the cloud on a personal level, before moving to a business-oriented product.

After that you could suggest the client to put his Disaster Recovery onto the cloud. This is where the user will begin to see the big-scale advantages of such platforms. External solutions do not increase the risks but minimize them. The clients will also learn that business can be restored from total wasteland to a working infrastructure in a matter of hours. Without the necessity of relying on physical hardware, small businesses will start to realize, that they have more to gain with the cloud solutions.

The next big step is the creation of a business infrastructure with a hybrid cloud system. This approach allows to segment business processes. For example, the client might keep his precious data at hand on the hard drive and only use the cloud for e-mail, direct-marketing and so on. Moreover, the client may still have his own IT-recourses, feeling that control over workflow on the hardware level, as well as in the cloud itself. I consider hybrid cloud an ideal environment for business which try to switch from completely local solution to full cloud SaaS-products.

The last and the most important step is putting your data production in the cloud. This is a big move for any company no matter the size. Most of the clients are afraid of such transitions, because it leaves the company vulnerable to external risks, connected with the failure of the cloud-provider. On this level one should push the financial advantages of using a cloud-service. We are selling a scalable system that grows together with the client’s business. For example small business client can save a lot of expenditures simply by using cloud-system that doesn’t cost much. It saves the most important resource any young startup has – money and time.

The same advantage goes for big enterprises. Sometime one may require great processing power, but most of the time is just stays there, eating up your money and destroying you business from inside. Instead why not borrow the analytical and processing power of the cloud when you really need it. You only pay for what you use. No one needs to buy a bunch of servers to support a website that will only last for 3 month.

By using these steps you will gradually build the necessary trust on client’s side. He will understand that you are selling a service, not just a product. He will learn that the Cloud is neither expensive nor unreliable. And then you will be able to start talking the same language and hopefully become partners.