There has been a lot of buzz around the concept of ‘cloud computing’ lately, and you may have seen Microsoft’s ‘to the cloud’ global advertising campaign. But even after all this buzz, I still find the concept hasn’t been fully explained for the average ‘non techie’. Starting out at IPM Global as a ‘non techie’ myself, I will do my best to explain it as I have come to understand it, and in completely ‘non techie’ terms.
Cloud computing means you can choose where you want to host your software. Rather than hosting software on your own company servers, you can pay another company a monthly service fee to host your software for you. This means you don’t have to pay upfront costs for hardware and server infrastructure, but rather ‘rent’ a hosting company’s server to host your software. You also have someone take care of all the IT infrastructure maintenance, and your data is safe in the event of a black out or natural disaster at your office.
A post from Ryan Plourde at the CRM software blog gives a nice analogy of cloud computing, where he explains that the difference between purchasing your own software up front and cloud computing is similar to buying your own house versus renting another house and paying in monthly instalments. Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages for both options, just as there are advantages and disadvantages of hosting your own software or investing in cloud computing. In short it comes down to what suits your organisation best.
So in order to further explain cloud computing and help you decide whether this option may be for you, here are some of the benefits of hosting IPM in our cloud vs. purchasing the software up front:
–Â Flexible monthly payment options with low set up costs
–Â Automated backups to insure the integrity of your data
–Â No hardware and server infrastructure investment required
–Â Automatic software upgrades and patches
–Â Access IPM data on site from any computer with an internet connection
–Â Full use of all areas of IPM
IPM Project Management deployed in the cloud is a good solution for small businesses that may not have the IT infrastructure or funds to host the software themselves, or may wish for a hosting solution that doesn’t need ‘looking after’, with all the backups and updates taken care of.
Let us know if you’d like more information on the cloud version of IPM by contacting us for a free a demo, or posting a comment below.
