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The new technology landscape can offer operating efficiencies for all sizes of business.  In the last several months, we have seen this belief reinforced by the migration of leading public and private institutions onto both the Google Apps and the Office 365 platform.

On the public sphere, we saw The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration move onto the Google for Government platform, with 25,000 seats.  UC Berkeley (50,000 seats) also migrated to Google, and told us exactly why they chose Google over Microsoft.  More recently, The All India Council for Technical Education shook hands with Microsoft executives, a deal that will move 7 million students, faculty, and staff onto the Office 365 version for education.  This is now the largest ever cloud migration.  On the private side, and from the banking industry no less, the Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, which is headquartered in Spain, recently moved 110,000 employees onto the Google Apps for Business platform.

Obviously, we are moving towards market majority who are now or will soon be leveraging the new platform for business efficiency.  Companies who are nervous about critical information will simply keep that information on their local servers.  For the day to day routine of employee collaboration and communication, the cloud based solutions are being adopted in droves.

These news items beg the question; what about the small business owner?  Can the cloud help small business operate leaner also?  My next blog post will offer an apples to apples cost analysis.

Most managers are pretty level headed, and tend to ask really blunt, straight forward questions like “so what?” If the executive is ambitious, the first question may be “How can my firm operate at peak capacity?”  This is an important question because it assumes that the technology is there to support mission critical business functions like customer experience.  The second and third questions might be: “how much does it cost?” and, “will I have to have to learn how to work again?”

The next question might be “what’s my liability if my information security is breached”, which you can read about in other places. The question about capacity tends to trump the cost question, and here’s why. Your success, if you are in a dynamic industry, demands that you perform at a very high level. Accountants measure things like goodwill as a way to account for reputation and brand preference. If you are planning on maintaining your position as a leading firm, or on gaining a position as a leading firm, you understand completely the necessity for smooth operations and a superior customer experience. The fundamental goal of a manager who handles technology should be to improve the bottom line through streamlined process management and education. The technology needs to support your most important assets; your clients and your employees. The costs of not doing this are counted in lost market position and missed opportunities. For some businesses, even one missed opportunity can outweigh the cost of maintaining a technology system.

That being said, the cost question is a real one. Industry reports are floating around that claim to decode the costs of technology ownership. If you have time, I’m sure you will read many of them. The bottom line is that, yes, for many types of companies a cloud based solution can save money. It saves money and it works. This is why the momentum is shifting towards the cloud brokers.

There’s lots of social networking tools and sites out there.   Paper.li is own of those that you can use to amaze your friends and family with so we thought we’d share.  Go check it out [here]. – David Eck (The Cloud Guy)