There’s a lot to take into consideration before moving to the cloud and a number of pain points that drive the decision to make that move. In this blog, we highlight three of the main pain points that our customers have told us about and our suggestions on how to handle them.
1. You’ve lost your Network Manager – what now?
You’ve lost a vital internal resource for managing your network and the expertise that goes with it. There isn’t anyone else who can pick up where they left off, so what do you do now? You don’t want to have to bin a whole network, but you’re struggling to get a replacement. You also don’t want to have to pay someone a day rate and end up being charged £750 every time something goes wrong, as that’s a very expensive way to do it. The luxury (or expense) of having this resource in-house rarely exists anymore owing to the way that the market is changing. Businesses are moving away from DIY IT – there simply aren’t any benefits to this when you can outsource it.
The answer to this conundrum is simple, you need to buy a cloud service because you can no longer run a premise-based service. To help you run your cloud service seamlessly, loss of an irreplaceable resource is the perfect opportunity to invest in a managed service to look after your network. The bonus is that it comes with a plethora of benefits. We speak to a lot of businesses in this exact situation, they desperately need someone to step in and pick up this vital role. Our advice every time is to replace this resource with a managed service. Instead of your business having to pay out a hefty salary to a dedicated resource, you are charged based on what you need looking after and how important it is, for example, whether it needs supporting 24 x 7 or only during your office hours. This frees up your IT resource to focus more energy on innovation, and less on maintaining old equipment.
2. You have equipment, but it’s outdated
Your IT technology is outdated. It’s only getting older, more expensive to run and to add insult to injury, the people who sold it to you are less interested than they were because their business has moved on (from premises-based equipment to cloud!) while your equipment has been gathering dust. When you need to update what you have, it’s going to get harder to buy as legacy technologies reach end of life. Your IT equipment has built-in obsolescence, so you need a solution and fast. Server-huggers, it’s time to face your fears and get rid of common illusions, because the cloud isn’t going anywhere.
The myth that cloud-based business communication solutions are not as reliable as a private branch exchange (PBX) system creeps into the minds of server-huggers today. The reality is that cloud-based systems are more reliable. For example, you can lose power in a comms room but there is only a remote possibility of losing power in multiple geographically-diverse data centres (ours are 200 miles apart). The service provider you choose will take care of everything for you to assure your business continuity and disaster recovery. They are responsible for everything that they deliver, enabling your business to be more responsive to market changes and to ensure that your cloud service is the best it can be – and if that’s not the case, it’s their problem, not yours.
The notion of on-premise hardware will be seen eventually as archaic, with IT continuing to shift toward value-based services and more scalable, cost-effective environments. The cloud will continue to move the focus to the underlying infrastructure that is mission-critical in today’s business environment. Stop being a server-hugger – cloud-based technologies can change the way you run your business by handing you greater flexibility and control, while requiring less money and time.
3. You’re locked into an old pricing model
A lot of businesses find themselves locked into an old pricing model where they have to pay for everything separately. New pricing models don’t work like that. For example, 21st century UCaaS doesn’t have a confusing menu of pricing – it’s simpler to buy, simpler to bill and simpler to onward bill, making it less complicated than legacy pricing models and so much easier to manage.
Cloud service providers enable you to move from a capex model to opex, decreasing spending in countless areas. It’s much easier to pay per use, eliminating wasteful spending on resources that ultimately go unused. This evens out the competitive playing field, giving businesses of all sizes access to the same technology.
Where to find out more
You can find out more about how we have helped our customers to move their IT infrastructure from premises-based equipment to the cloud by clicking here or by getting in touch with our team of experts here
