Adopting a Utility IT Strategy

The cloud is a common topic of conversation about how to do business today. But if you really think about it, for SMBs, the cloud embodies yesterday’s thinking.

Today, SMBs instead need to embrace the idea of “utility IT,” the ability to have as much or as little IT as you need it, when you need it much the same as electricity or water. The cloud provides amazing computing advantages and opportunities, but some assembly is required, so it’s not really the place for the SMB, which typically doesn’t have the technological or financial resources for such an undertaking.

To build cloud capabilities, you need to be able to run servers and related hardware, software and keep up with the latest security applications and patches. With most SMBs having little or no technology staff, that leaves no time to pursue the actual business of the company. So the cloud is the space for managed service providers and for larger companies that build cloud technology for their own uses.

Rather than building technology resources internally - including all of the necessary hardware and software -- for your own uses, you should instead be thinking “utility IT.” You can consume cloud based services and software, but they usually address only point needs, not the totality of all of your technology needs. If you are getting office solutions from one provider, security solutions from another, other solutions from a third, etc., they often don’t integrate together, and there is plenty of room for problems to emerge from the cracks between these point systems. So the best bet is a comprehensive solution from a single managed services provider, just as you have with electric, gas and other utilities. In a world of automation, workflow, provisioning and orchestration systems, SMBs become a benefactor of IT commoditization. SMBs have a certain level of foundational IT needs that differ among business types as well as among individual businesses in the same industry. But most of those IT needs can be packaged and delivered in a click-together approach, just like on your mobile device in which you add or delete apps as needed and pay for data as you consume it.

So the next time you read something about the cloud, recognize that for an SMB, it is only a means to an end rather than the end itself. For the SMB owner, the cloud is like the local power plant that gives you the ability to turn on the lights and operate the copier, fax, etc., necessary for you to run your business.

Here is a good summary of 20 Truths about Cloud that Every SMB should know from Techaisle (http://techaisle.com/).

For more information on the benefits SMBs can derive by shifting IT resources to the cloud, go to https://secaas.sonicwall.com/.