Cloud-based services are often touted as a revolution and a panacea but in reality it is neither. Even Internet-based services have been around for a long time, indeed the largest Internet-based services is the World Wide Web which is essentially a dispersed online publishing service.

Even today many firms use online services without actually thinking of them as cloud-based services. Email is the one most likely for a business as most companies have an online email server without hosting the email server themselves and the latest hosted Exchange offers from Microsoft and others should be seriously considered by any business offering all of the features of an in-house Exchange server without needing the IT equipment to host it themselves.

However, today you can subscribe to accounting packages without buying them, you can subscribe to office applications without buying them. Indeed, you can use thin clients rather than fully-configured PCs to access your IT environment online keeping IT infrastructure down to an absolute minimum. For very small businesses this may be a viable option but there are problems.

The first for businesses in South West of Ireland is decent data communications. Remember, if all your I.T. kit is in the cloud then your connection to that cloud becomes absolutely paramount. Any company basing critical systems online should seriously consider two independent Internet connections to ensure connectivity. The key word there is “independent”, two DSL lines will be no good if the telephone exchange has a problem. So look at a DSL line and a WiMAX link. Also, be careful with your service provider, even reputable services can have problems, look at Intuit. They provide accounting software (the most well-known being Quickbooks) both as a license and online. Recently their online offering went off-line for nearly two days due to a power fault that took their primary AND backup systems down.

Some applications require real-time or predictable connectivity between devices and often that means systems have to be connected locally. This could include POS solutions and reservations systems. However, this is not to say that SaaS products do not have a place in these business but, as with anything, planning and solution design is paramount.