This step is critical and it is criminal how many businesses forget it. You’re most likely handling a lot of data including client lists, customer names, credit card information, and so on, and you need a place to store it.
If you have all of this precious data in one area, and the unthinkable happens and it’s lost, then you’re stuck. Backing up in the cloud is one answer to this
There are a number of backup solutions you can use, including Carbonite, SugarSync and CrashPlan. These are fairly cheap and definitely worth the effort – you’ll thank yourself when a server catches on fire.
Of course, when backing up your data you should always follow the 3-2-1 rule: keep three copies of data, on two separate media, and keep one off-site.
There are plenty of CRM-based solutions out on the web, but the biggest trend over the past 10 years has been moving that process into the cloud.
With companies like SalesForce providing applications and services for CRM, which are tailored to the size of your business, there really isn’t a good reason to do it all yourself as you likely won’t do as good a job.
Of course, SalesForce isn’t the only option and offerings from Zoho, SugarCRM and Merlin are all available. You should do some investigation and figure out which will be the best for your individual business.
Although you can definitely set up your email in the cloud, many businesses are finding they don’t even need to use the technology anymore. Instead, they use instant messaging services.
Why bother sending an email when you can have a conversation in real time? Services such as Gmail and Skype already have instant messaging features, so if you’re using one then there isn’t really any point in having an email conversation – compared to IMs, they’re just too slow.
Ever wanted to see how many sales you do between 5pm and 7pm? Or want to know when any of your staff have logged on to a particular system, or if someone’s changed a setting in the infrastructure of your website?
Cloud computing can track all these statistics and plenty more. Services like SalesForce allow you to find statistics for anything you can imagine, allowing you to make accurate forecasts and pinpoint where there are problems in your business.
Computer infrastructure is expensive – so why bother buying it? Virtual computing is one way you can get the power of top-end machines without having to shell out your entire IT budget.
Virtual desktops allow you to access computer systems through the cloud without actually installing them on your machine. You’ll save on software and infrastructure costs, and because there are a heap of companies like VMWare and 2X that provide virtualisation services you’ll have plenty of support.
