A Case for the Cloud

First, let’s define “the cloud”. Cloud computing is the act of sharing resources, software, documents, and other information via a network that exists online. Rather than servers that are internalized and can only be accessed when working from a company computer, cloud documents are available anywhere.

Understandably, this makes people uneasy. The internet itself is largely considered untrustworthy, and this is a reputation that isn’t without merit. But cloud-based security, while accessible through the internet, has the same security that internal servers do.

People resist cloud technology because it seems less tangible. You have a workforce right now that is a marriage of the old and new way of doing things. People who keep paper files are never going to understand how their paper-free colleagues keep their data organized, and vice versa.

Want reasons to move to the cloud? Here are five good reasons.

  1. Employees can work from anywhere. Imagine having access to everything you need to get through a regular workday No more emailing yourself presentations or worrying about losing flash drives or going through the headache of getting your personal computer connected to your company’s servers through the installation of software. Cloud storage puts everything right at your fingertips.
  2. Data is easily moved. So if your company’s physical location heads for a new office space across town, you don’t need to worry about the complicated set-up of your internal server system. Once the internet’s on, you are officially up, running, and open for business.
  3. Remote workers. Particularly useful for companies that have multiple locations across the country. Once you update your cloud files with the most recent version of your policy, proposal packages, contract templates, and so forth, it’s accessible for everyone within your network, eliminating the concern that so-and-so was sent last year’s file and need to start from scratch.
  4. Managing and maintaining in-house servers is costly. Moving to the cloud cuts back on overhead costs.
  5. Client feedback. With cloud storage, you can also create specific storage locations to share documents or information easily with clients, and vice versa. This also helps when transferring large files that are sometimes too large for email attachments. It’s a good way for your staff and your clients to remain in contact with each other every day, but also providing clients with access to common documents, therein saving them a phone call and you an interruption.

When it comes to security, cloud storage is actually much more secure than you might think—even more so than in-house servers. What makes them secure?

Cloud storage typically saves at least three copies of each piece of data in different places. In order to lose that specific piece of data, all three copies would need to be deleted. And even if this occurs, because of the forever-nature of the internet, the data can usually still be recovered anyway.

As long as you take care of your password—and make it more complex than “password”, “qwerty”, “123456”, or any of the other most common passwords of all time—the files are only accessible by you. This is similar in how internal servers are managed. You are in charge of the local machine you use to connect. The cloud servers themselves are stored in physically secure data centers, not accessible to anyone who doesn’t already have access.

Think of the cloud like you do a bank. When a bank gets robbed, does your balance go down? No, because the money that is in your account isn’t reflective of the money banks keep in their teller tills and the vault. The cloud operates in the same way—and attackers are typically more focused on physical locations. Most all of the breaches you’ve heard about where the data of thousands of people was compromised occurred on traditional servers

Want to learn more about moving to the cloud? Contact or call 85under. We’re happy to answer any of your questions!