You may have been hearing a lot lately about the cloud. Even some IT professionals aren’t really sure what the cloud is. Well in basic terms it is sharing servers to run your applications and storing data as opposed to using a server located in your office.

You would sign up with a cloud provider just like how you have an Internet provider.  You would then access your servers via the Internet and access your data and run applications remotely from their  servers.

Now that you have a basic understanding of what the cloud is and how it works we come to the important issues: the advantages and disadvantages of the cloud.

Advantages
The main advantage of using the cloud is cost. You do not have to pay for and maintain your own server in your office. You essentially lease access to the cloud providers servers.  Because these servers are shared by many other customers of the cloud provider they only charge you a fraction of the cost for the servers and they maintain the servers.

These cost savings can be reallocated to other areas of your company such as operational costs etc.

Disadvantages
There are a few disadvantages of using the cloud.  Since you are leasing remote servers from another company they are in control of your data and applications. This is not necessarily a disadvantage. You just have to do your research before deciding on a cloud provider.

Make sure and find out that they have the applications that you require installed on their servers and you have access to them. Also be sure that you still own your data that is on their servers and that if you decide to leave, you can take it with you.  Also you should have the option to remotely backup the data to your own internal systems such as office computers or flash drives etc. Even though you can usually make your own backups be sure to ask about their data integrity. Do they make backups of data? How often? What do they do if there is a system failure of any kind?

The bottom line is it is your decision. Do your research and decide what is the best solution for you.

Most IT professionals agree that the cloud is the future of IT.