Tag: traditional IT

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4 Rules of Thumb for Considering Cloud Applications in Business

With all the talk of cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service models, businesses are increasingly questioning their continued use of on-premises and “traditional” software implementations. Having heard that cloud applications are cheaper and better than locally installed solutions, some small business owners and IT managers are actively seeking alternatives to their current software selections. In too many cases, however, these business owners or IT managers aren’t looking at the longer term impacts of their decisions, and may be adopting cloud software solutions simply because it seems to be the way things are going these days.

The cloud is simply a term being applied to a new way of looking at information technology – how businesses buy it, how they use it, and what they expect from it. Even as technology gets more complicated, users are demanding greater ease-of-use and lower costs. The response to these conditions is the cloud: addressing basic and common requirements and delivering the solution for a low-cost to many users. While the approach meets the simplicity and affordability elements, it may or may not fully address all the functional, compliance or sustainability needs of the business.

4-rules-of-thumbOne size never fits all, and this is as true with cloud computing as it is with bathing suits. For the business owner or IT manager considering adoption of cloud-based applications for the business, keep in mind these 4 Rules of Thumb so that the hype and excitement doesn’t cloud your judgment.

Rule 1: Software is software, and it is installed somewhere. Just because an application is accessed using a browser (which is software) doesn’t mean the product isn’t installed somewhere. When it’s a SaaS solution, the product is simply installed and running on the provider’s servers rather than your own computers.  Software can fail even when it isn’t on your computer, so it should be expected that failure could happen with SaaS solutions.  The difference is that a failure of an app on one machine isn’t news; failure of an app that lots of people are using at the same time is news.

Rule 2: Software that talks to other software means there is integration between the two. Whether the products are installed on the PC or whether they run from different providers’ systems, they still have to be able to communicate together at some common level. The Windows platform used to provide a “common” standard for integration of Windows applications. When applications move from the desktop platform to the web, many of the common integration approaches no longer work and new methods must be developed.  Just because a solution integrates with the desktop edition of a product does not mean it will automatically integrate with a web or SaaS edition of the product (QuickBooks exemplifies this).

Rule 3: Software still requires hardware and other resources. When cloud-based solutions are implemented, the cost of the server and storage facilities (along with other elements) may be included in the subscription price. The efficiency and scale economies developed by the provider will ultimately determine their profitability, but it is generally the case that centralization of resources, management and administration can significantly reduce the cost of operations. With most cloud solutions, it is the assumption of scale (leveraging a single asset base to many subscribing customers) which makes things more affordable than deploying similar capabilities individually for each customer. Consider also that any deployment of cloud software solutions still means that businesses must retain their local networks and devices. While PCs, laptops and tablets may not be running business applications, they are still computing devices which may need to connect to networks, have virus protection, have remote access or connection software installed on them, and any number of other things. In short, moving to the cloud does not remove the requirement to have and maintain user devices, printers and LANs.  And really, don’t most people still want Office applications on their devices, even if they also have remote access to such applications?  Office for iPad is somewhat of a tell in that respect; kind of proves the point.

Rule 4: Not all data is stored in the same manner. This is as true on a PC or LAN as it is in the cloud. However, cloud solutions can introduce quite a wrinkle when it comes to keeping copies of business data over time. With PCs and local networks, a business would back up their data in any variety of ways, preserving the files and formats for possible later use. As long as there was software available to read and open the files, the backed up data would be usable. Simply due to the popularity of some data formats, there might also be tools or utilities available to read the data even if the original application was lost. The wrinkle introduced with cloud solutions is not necessarily that the format of the data is strange – it is likely that most cloud-based business applications use fairly proven and recognizable database technology. The difficulty is that the actual database file(s) containing a company’s unique data may or may not be separate from other company data. If it is separate (single-tenant database), it is unlikely that the database as structured is portable. The fact is, most web-based or cloud solutions will allow users to export data from the database, but cannot provide actual structured data files ready for use with another application, lacking logical data or table relationships. Some solutions suggest that simple list exports are sufficient, and others may say they have data conversion capabilities, but the reality is that data existing in a cloud application is not very portable. Business intelligence is a terrible thing to waste, so it is really important to be able to take all the data with you (in a meaningful way, not as a bunch of disparate lists).

Cloud computing covers a really broad spectrum of technologies and delivery models, and most of the above is more about SaaS applications rather than actual cloud platforms. The platforms are where the applications live – server and network environments.  This is where hosting companies do their work, as the things they host live on the platforms.

Businesses electing to add mobility, management, fault tolerance and other capabilities to their systems should explore the benefits of application hosting and cloud platforms, and not immediately look to SaaS and cloud application alternatives to their existing software solutions. By deploying their systems in a managed hosting environment, businesses can often keep using their existing core software products, integrations, and data archiving methods while gaining the best benefits of “cloud”.

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?
J

 

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Focus on the Finance Department: QuickBooks in the Cloud

Focus on the Finance Department: QuickBooks in the Cloud

Vendors and IT solution providers are all buzzing about their cloud services and solutions available via the Web.  This buzz often includes statements about lower cost of IT acquisition and service management and how mobility and remote access benefits the business.  These statements are proving true for many businesses, yet there are still vast numbers of small business operating on local computers and unmanaged service.  The reasons which hold back these business from adopting cloud computing models are as many and varied as the businesses themselves, but there is a consistent thread to be found in these reasons, and it has to do with a lack of understanding of what certain applications really mean to the business.  In this case, the discussion is about the focus on strictly operational or administrative areas of the business and not on the finance department which, in so many small businesses, uses QuickBooks.

Cloud solution providers are in business to make money, and hosting companies in particular are looking for the right applications which will drive usage and revenues on their platforms.  When these providers look at the small business market, they’re trying to identify the applications and services that small business owners will adopt in volume.  Identification of these opportunities to serve a large customer base is essential to the provider’s economy of scale and profit model.  It makes sense that hosts would want to offer the applications which drive the highest degree of usage in their environments, so they tend to focus on the applications used by the greatest number of users within the customer organization.  In the small business market, these applications are email and productivity tools – solutions which are used broadly throughout the business and which serve a horizontal rather than vertical industry orientation.  Those are the two easy picks; finding the next most valuable solution represents a bigger challenge for the provider.

qbcloudWith Intuit QuickBooks desktop editions boasting the lion’s share of the small business accounting market, it seems that hosting QuickBooks products would be the next natural selection by hosting providers already serving their small business clients with email and productivity solutions.  However, because these service providers do not fully understand the essential functions QuickBooks serves in the small business, the assumption is that the usage of the solution is so nominal that it doesn’t make sense to develop the capability to offer it.  It is a misunderstanding that many providers have, and is the result of a lack of historic participation in the product.  QuickBooks, you see, is a direct to consumer product rather than a channel product, and most IT service providers and hosting companies recognize the product name but not really what it does or how it operates.  And these hosts are often large companies and therefore have no direct experience using the product, so there is no frame of reference for them to work from.  These service providers are simply overlooking the important role that QuickBooks solutions play in many small businesses, where it is used to handle various operational aspects of the business as well as being the product of choice for bookkeeping and accounting.  Particularly with the QuickBooks Premier and Enterprise editions offering additional functionality and industry-specific features, the products are used widely by small businesses and not just for accounting and finance.

The point of the discussion is that hosting companies and “cloud server” providers should look at the mixture of applications used by their small business customers, and they are likely to find that QuickBooks products are pretty high on the list.  Even if there are only a few people in the accounting department, and the usage by these individuals is not representative of the entire hosting opportunity, hosts should recognize that those few individuals and the software they use are not only essential, but are probably processing payroll for all those other users on the system and are paying the bills for products and services purchased.  After all, if you’re going to make anybody in the company happy, make sure to focus on the finance department and help them get their QuickBooks in the Cloud, as they’re the ones that will be paying the bill for the service.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet

Make Sense?

J

 

 
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Cloud Computing for Small Business: It’s All About 3 Apps

Every business uses technology at some level, and every business has certain fundamental needs which are most frequently met through the use of computing technology.  Regardless of business type or size and independent of industry orientation, there are 3 fundamental things which every business does which means that there are 3 fundamental application types or solutions which every business will buy at some point.  These 3 application types, which could be distilled down to just “applications”, have become so broadly used in business and so widely recognized as the standards that their names are often used instead of the term representing the functionality they provide.  When it comes to cloud computing for small business, it’s all about these 3 applications.

In what are now referred to as “legacy” or “traditional” models, these products would generally be purchased as software and associated hardware to run it, and would be installed and managed on the local premises.  With cloud computing models, the solutions may be purchased or subscribed as managed infrastructure and application licenses, or as a full service subscription (SaaS).  Regardless of the service model, the applications are the key to the customer win.  While cloud computing may be challenging how IT products and services are sold and delivered to customers, it is not fully impacting which solutions customers are actually looking for.  Over the past 16 years this has been the reality, and it may take another decade before these products are unseated from their top positions simply due to the inertia of the installed bases they’ve already developed.  Service providers have found (or will find) a way to deliver these applications in cloud computing style, or small businesses will simply not move everything to the cloud very quickly.  It is really just that simple, and I’ll explain why.

QuickBooks-Hosting-WordCloudThe three things that each and every business does, and which they generally purchase computers and software to facilitate, are communicating, producing information, and keeping score.

1. Communicating is an essential need for every business.  Whether it is communication via phone, fax, email or otherwise, businesses will communicate and they will purchase products which help them do it better.  The standard for business email communications has become Microsoft Exchange, which is now available as a highly affordable subscription service from Microsoft or from a wide variety of commercial MS Exchange hosting providers.  Certainly the popularity and growth of hosted Exchange supports the argument that not only is MS Exchange mail very widely used in businesses of all sizes, but that it is also highly acceptable as a hosted solution because users retain desired functionality and are able to benefit from a variety of add-ons and additional services from their hosted Exchange email provider.  The other thing about hosted Exchange is that the user can still use MS Outlook on their desktop to get their mail.  Now we’re back to the desktop application again.  Regardless of what mail server and service the user has, they are often more attached to using Outlook than they are to the mail service.  In fact, when you ask a fairly non-technical user what they use for email, they’ll often say they use Outlook (the desktop client, not Outlook.com).

2. Producing Information is another essential need for every business.  Whether the information is produced for internal or external use, there is a lot of information created to inform various people about the business.  Documents, spreadsheets and presentations are used in every business, and productivity applications help people create them.  The standard in this area is Microsoft’s Office suite of products which includes Word, Excel and Powerpoint.  It isn’t unusual to have someone suggest “making a powerpoint to get the message across”, rather than using the word “presentation”, and does anyone expect to get a document not in .doc format?  When users ask for productivity products, they usually ask for Office software and they usually mean Microsoft Office suite products.

The broad use and proven suitability of these products has well established them as the standards for use in business.  While these applications are now available as limited-functionality web-based applications, most businesses continue to rely on the desktop products which resulted in myriad file sharing and “collaboration” tools which work with the Office products.  Microsoft recognized the value of having the feature-rich productivity applications available in hosted and managed service models (as hosted applications rather than true web-based apps), and made the products available for licensing and distribution via their Service Provider License Agreement (SPLA). Microsoft (direct and via partners) also offers Office 365, which provides licensing for Office desktop applications and/or hosted Exchange email services.

Hosts with cloud servers and managed infrastructure and VDI solutions are all facing this truth: their services are useful when there are applications running on them, and among the most frequently requested applications are the Office apps.  This is why so many providers offer not only cloud servers and virtual desktop solutions, they add value to their service by also offering the Microsoft Office products.  At least in the case of MS Office, service providers have recognized that certain fundamental applications must be present in order for the server or desktop to have value for the SMB customer.  After all, “moving the server to the cloud” doesn’t solve the problem if all the apps remain on the local PCs.

And then we come to the final application – the last fundamental small business application for service providers to focus on.  It is with this application that hosting companies will make real impact in moving their small business customers from local to hosted applications, virtual desktops, and the world of cloud servers and managed hosting.

3. Keeping score, or accounting, is the final absolute and fundamental business function which exists in every business regardless of size, type or industry.  This is another area where service providers are focusing, realizing that within the realm of small business accounting there is a single standard product line which serves the exact profile of the target SMB/SME customer: Intuit QuickBooks desktop products.

When challenged to find a single application solution which addresses a fundamental business need, is not oriented towards a particular industry segment, and which is likely to drive increased usage simply due to existing market penetration and sales – there is only one name that answers, and it is QuickBooks, most specifically the Pro, Premier and Enterprise desktop editions.

Looking further into the problem reveals that there may be more options for small business accounting emerging in the SaaS market, but this doesn’t help the hosting companies looking to increase usage on their own platforms.  Additionally, while new and emerging solutions may be introducing options for very small business, the activity actually serves to increase awareness of and usage of computerized accounting solutions, resulting in increased share of the market looking for and purchasing these solutions – increasing the overall market for SMB accounting products and providing an opportunity to sell QuickBooks solutions to those new users. Further, Intuit QuickBooks remains the dominant choice once the business has needs beyond simple invoicing and bill payment, and continues to see growth in product sales and distribution for this reason.

It’s also true that, once a business has itself “invested” in an accounting product, change is not something considered easily.  In many (most?) cases, the business is more closely tied to their financial systems than they are to their service provider.  If the provider can’t work with the software, the business is likely to seek services from another provider.

Moving everything but finance to the cloud is not an option for most businesses, either. Particularly with small business/small enterprise, there are generally systems which serve a broad business need and not a single function.  QuickBooks is not just a back-office accounting product.  It also provides some front-office functionality, such as storing general customer information, handling invoicing, inventory management, job costing and other functions.  It is essential that service providers not minimize the importance of this solution in their target client operation.

The financial system is not an island and is often integrated with or connected to other applications and data.  Even though the QuickBooks desktop products are designed to suit businesses up to 250 employees, it is unlikely that a business will have all 250 people running QuickBooks.  Rather, the product may be used by 2 or 3 people in the accounting department, or possibly by up to 30+ users in an Enterprise deployment where the product serves more operationally oriented functions.  The rest of the company is likely using MS Office and email as suggested earlier, and perhaps some other operational or business specific product which may integrate with QuickBooks.  The point is that it’s unwise for service providers to minimize the importance of the financial software and systems, even if those solutions are used by only a very few of the total number of users within the organization. 

More evidence suggesting that the name QuickBooks has become almost synonymous with  small business bookkeeping is visible within the accounting and bookkeeping industry, where bookkeeper training programs focus as much on the QuickBooks product (if not more so) than on actual accounting fundamentals.  Businesses hiring bookkeepers don’t ask for bookkeeping experience, they ask for QuickBooks experience.  If a small business owner asks his accountant what product to use, it’s a good bet that the accountant will recommend, and possibly even set up, QuickBooks for the client.  There is momentum there which cannot be argued with, and it represents significant opportunity for those who have platforms to run the stuff.  Weirdly, QuickBooks desktop editions and other desktop-based financial products available in a cloud hosted model represent a last and final element which is driving broad adoption of cloud servers and hosted desktops within the SMB markets.

It is all about the apps, but not just any apps.  It’s about the apps small businesses need, want, know, and currently use.  Service providers who can offer their customers these applications as cloud service – as managed applications on a cloud server or VDI platform – are in a position to serve the broadest base of SMB/SME customers. Talk about addressable market… at that point, it becomes a simple function of exposure as the value proposition is undeniable (and barrier-free).

Joanie Mann Bunny FeetMake Sense?

J