Master the Cloud: The 7-Step Guide to Moving Your Small Business to the Cloud

By Howard Small

Master the Cloud was written for Small Business Owners (SBOs) who want to take advantage of the transformative power of cloud computing to streamline business operations, attract customers and increase sales. The book explains how SBOs can acquire powerful, secure and cost effective cloud-based IT resources, in the form of services, to meet their current business needs and to help manage future growth. The book presents a systematic, step-by-step approach to help SBOs transition to the cloud, and use cloud services to enhance business success.

SBOs are seeking more effective ways to interact with customers, partners, suppliers and investors, especially if they are geographically dispersed. They want to connect to their businesses via laptops, tablets and smartphones. They want to expand into new markets without significantly expanding IT costs. They want to replace their existing IT with more secure and less expensive services. SBOs also want to ensure ongoing business survival and prosperity.

Before the cloud, SBOs had to buy and maintain expensive IT to run operations. If they needed to expand, they had to buy more IT. If they wanted to relocate, they had to take their IT with them or buy new IT. And if they wanted to partner or merge with other businesses, they had to buy even more IT to integrate their respective environments. Moreover, SBOs had to replace their IT every three to five years because hardware components would invariably wear out, or would no longer have the capacity to run the latest versions of software. So SBOs either struggled along with the old equipment, sold it as surplus, donated it or threw it out.

This book explains how SBOs can get the benefit of IT and avoid the burden by leveraging cloud services. It presents seven key steps to help SBOs transition to the cloud. The book also explains why SBOs must operate in the cloud today, and why the future of SBO success hinges on the cloud.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Howard Small
• Release date: Aug 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9780996253604

Howard Small

Howard Small is a cloud computing engineer, writer and consultant who helps Small Business Owners (SBOs) streamline operations, attract customers and increase sales by taking advantage of the power of cloud computing.Howard’s mission is to help SBOs cut through the ever-increasing volume of material about the cloud, and resolve the often conflicting data to give you a clear picture of cloud capabilities and benefits. Howard will show you how to quickly apply cloud technologies to improve the operational efficiency of your business, get your products and services to market faster, and increase your business revenue and profits.Howard has bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering, and several years of experience as a principal software engineer. Howard currently helps organizations to migrate their applications to the cloud. Contact Howard via www.cloudhinge.com.

Book preview

Master the Cloud

The 7-Step Guide to Moving Your Small Business to the Cloud

Use the Cloud to Streamline Operations, Attract Customers and Increase Sales

Copyright 2015

Published by Howard Small

CloudHinge.com

ISBN 978-0-9962536-0-4

This guide is written for current and future owners of small businesses, including brick and mortar stores, service businesses and professional practices. It is for business owners who may not be completely clear on what cloud computing is, what it offers, or how it can help streamline operations, attract customers and increase sales.

I would certainly appreciate your comments or suggestions, to help make this and upcoming books more valuable. Please send your feedback to me at [e-mail].

Also let me know if you’d like to excerpt any of the content in this guide or from my blog, http://www.cloudhinge.com/blog, for your business communications or marketing. You can contact me for permission at [e-mail].

Master the Cloud: The 7-Step Guide to Moving Your Small Business to the Cloud

ISBN 978-0-9962536-0-4

© 2015 Howard Small, www.cloudhinge.com

All rights reserved

Also by Howard Small

9 Key Facts You Must Know About The Cloud:

Why They Are Important to the Future of Your Small Business

Available for Free at www.cloudhinge.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Value of the Cloud

Understanding the Cloud

7 Steps to Mastering the Cloud

Step 1: Review Your Business Focus

Step 2: Assess Your Current IT Environment

Step 3: Analyze Your IT Needs

Step 4: Evaluate the Cloud Service Offerings

Step 5: Determine the Right Services for Your Business

Step 6: Pilot the Services in Your Business

Step 7: Implement the Services

What to Do Next

Send Your Feedback

About the Author

Contact the Author

Introduction

Information Technology (IT) continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly dependent on it. IT has become part of how we conduct our lives and our work. It has also become part of how we do business. Many Small Business Owners (SBOs) understand that IT is not just important for running a business, it is critical for business survival and growth.

Technologies such as the personal computer (PC), the World Wide Web and mobile devices have transformed our lives and our work. PCs have provided us with substantial computing power to manage our businesses. The web has given us access to unlimited information, and extensive ways to communicate with customers. Mobile devices have significantly improved our ability to run businesses at any time and from anywhere.

The IT evolution has led to cloud computing, the most transformative and disruptive set of technologies yet. The transformative nature of the cloud puts an incredible array of capabilities at our fingertips. And the disruptive nature threatens to make some prior technologies obsolete.

Enter the Cloud

Cloud computing has become the new normal for processing, storing and communicating data by individuals and businesses. The cloud not only enhances the power of existing IT capabilities, it also offers newer capabilities. The cloud allows us to run software applications on a previously unfathomable scale, involving hundreds or thousands of processors, especially for high performance and scientific computing.

The cloud enables us to store and analyze huge amounts of data, on the order of millions of graphic images or billions of text documents, in support of the applications. It also allows us to share that volume of data over high speed communication lines at billions of bits per second.

All of this cloud computing, storage and network power is provided by Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) from gigantic data centers around the world. The powerful capabilities are provided at much lower prices and at much higher reliabilities than businesses can provide for themselves.

The Impact on our Society

The CSPs use massive racks of equipment in their data centers to provide IT to individual and business customers in the form of services. Customers lease the services as needed, rather than buying, installing and maintaining their own hardware and software.

This is further evidence that we’re becoming more of a leasing or pay-per-use society. In addition to leasing products as varied as apartments, planes, cars, furniture, bicycles, garden equipment and textbooks, we can now lease IT services from the cloud. We can lease the services on demand, we can use only the services we need, and we can scale the services automatically as our needs change.

No More Barriers to Entry

The cloud has eliminated or dramatically lowered the barriers to entry for obtaining IT services, especially for small businesses. SBOs can startup and run businesses with powerful IT capabilities that were previously only affordable by large businesses.

The cloud enables SBOs to reach customers in regional, national or global markets. It helps SBOs to develop and launch new products and services quickly, to satisfy the needs of the markets. The cloud also