Cloud App syndrome?

[GBalcom]

I work as a GM for a small business, and am an amateur developer in access and VBA. I've been watching with some interest this cloud and software as a service movement over the last few years. My goal for our company has been to keep our data as clean and tight as we can. All of my little apps I've created are tied directly to our ERP's SQL database, which resides on our server in our office. Nothing other than our backups are in the "cloud".

This is great when we're at the office, which is 90% of the time. But, I'd like to be able to pull data from my phone or tablet when I'm in the field--perhaps specifics on a project, or a customer's phone number, etc.

This I have not been able to accomplish.

The reason for this post is I see all of these apps now that are geared towards slices of small business data....CRM apps, Billing apps, email campaign apps, Order Entry, web site shopping carts, etc. All in the cloud, all as a service.

What does this mean for the future of small business? How are people "tying" all this data together in the day to day functions of business? Are we better or worse off for it?

 

[Minty]

We still store everything locally, and provide web based access to various parts of our business to employees and customers. This is all done through SQL Server and IIS.
We host the internal website directly, and are in direct controls of who is allowed access.

The only downside is the cost of SQL server if you are a small business. It seems to have become more and more expensive. If you are not looking at multiple users then SQL Server express may be be the answer, as it could link to your ERP data very easily.

 

[GBalcom]

Minty,
We're using SQL Express now for our Engineering Data...The ERP is actually Sybase, but we connect fine using ODBC. What is IIS? (googling now)

 

[CJ_London]

I use Jump to access my pc when in the field - can do so from phone, laptop or tablet - providing there is a decent internet connection.

This presents my pc screen which I can then manipulate as if I was in front of it.

There are a few similar services out there, Teamview comes to mind, but I chose Jump because it mimics touchscreen better (with many you have to drag the mouse to the appropriate button before clicking, with Jump, you can just tap on it). I haven't looked recently, perhaps the others have caught up.

It only takes a few seconds to login but probably not as convenient as a purpose built app

 

[Minty]

IIS = Internet Information Services http://www.iis.net/

 

[AccessBlaster]

Cloud storage is nothing more than subscription storage. Many software company's will offer you a custom built program for little to no charge. That is if you agree to their subscription fee, which could run several thousand dollars a year.

If you can't pay the subscription fees you lose access to your data.

If you have a Onedrive account you may have received a email about cloud storage yesterday.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

The whole point of the cloud is because the demand for services always overruns the supply. In specific, the services to which I refer are that to run a business, you have a set of "footprints" - i.e. the space taken up, not always literal space, by some component of your business. The cloud allows you to reduce that footprint. Here are some examples:

1. The computer itself, which is hardware that can fail, have aging issues, is hard as hell to expand quickly when your business suddenly "pegs" the CPU "busy" statistic, needs maintenance contracts, power, climate-control on your server farm, adequate disk storage for the business you run, ...

2. The people required to support the computer, including a systems administrator, system operators, backup manager/operators, system analysts, customer help desk, plus the janitorial staff, electricians for power management, environmental specialists to run the HVAC units, etc.

Small businesses cannot afford enough separate people to fill the slots for #2 in order to manage the problems of #1. They can't hire a cadre of supporters unless the company becomes big enough to have that depth of overhead on their payroll, and let's be honest - most of the people I named in #2 are overhead with respect to customer business.

But if you look at the concept of "the cloud" you can see that cloud vendors sell Infrastructure as a Server (in cloud-speak, IAAS). The cloud vendor has the personnel (shared among many customers) needed for #2 above, and they can add one virtual server that has capacity for literally a dozen customers at once, none of whom really needed a centralized server full-time.

Cloud vendors also sell software as a service (SAAS) so that you don't need to buy your own copy of the backup software, not to mention office services, web services, etc. It is a matter of how much a company is able to hire enough technical people - and is willing to keep them on a payroll - to do all the things that they need done.

For smaller companies, the answer is NO - because hiring one person full-time to be a jack-of-all-trades (or a jill-of..., I'm not sexist) can't compete with hiring a company that gives you access to many individuals who have the luxury of being specialists.

I know about this more intimately than I actually wanted to know, because the U.S. Navy is running its own "internal" cloud and I'm one of the specialists. When I tell you that I work at the New Orleans Naval Enterprise Data Center, I'm REALLY telling you that I work in the Navy's cloud management center - because NEDC NO really IS a cloud computing center that provides the services I described above.