Are you an IT Manager who is struggling to sell in cloud based solutions to your senior management team?
Perhaps you’re a business owner who wants to understand more about the cloud. What are the risks and are they outweighed by the benefits? Are you sceptical about it all?
We understand and that’s why we wanted to explore some of the main concerns that people have when considering moving some or all of their business operations into a virtual world.
(1) You want to stick with what you know
You have a solution that has been working well for your business until now and you don’t want to change it. Innovation isn’t a priority and you see business cloud hosting and cloud backup solutions as an unnecessary risk. If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.
We totally get that, and we understand that not all change is good. But it’s worth considering that in a changing marketplace, what’s worked in the past won’t necessarily work in the future. The beauty of cloud solutions like Veeam Cloud Connect is that they facilitate agile working, and open up opportunities to try new things without all the hassle and expense of investing in costly new hard infrastructure.
(2) You don’t want to cut operating costs
Systems change can be costly, and investments need to be sold in at senior management level. That’s a given, right?
Actually, innovation doesn’t have to be costly, and cloud based working can deliver vast savings.
80% of small and medium enterprises rely on time-consuming manual processes like spreadsheets or pen and paper. ITProPortal describes some of the many ways that cloud technology can streamline processes, improve company-wide communication, cut infrastructure costs and improve productivity.
(3) You worry that once your data is in the cloud, you lose control of it
Data is gold dust in today’s increasingly connected world. Recent data security lapses and revelations (for example around Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and Huawei) have highlighted how we are right to be concerned about who has our data and how is it processed and shared.
With Brexit looming and potential new international partnerships being discussed, there are concerns and uncertainty around how cloud-based data will be affected by different international laws and protections in future.
We share your concerns. And that’s why we only operate through UK-based data centres. We offer all Veeam services, so we don’t outsource to other partners. We have ISO 27001 Certified Systems. We own our cloud.
Your data is in safe hands with us.
(4) You don’t support flexible working
You like to see people sat at their desks in the office, visible and under control. Having employees working from home or on the road travelling for meetings and working remotely just opens up a whole other level of management stress. If this sounds like your company culture, then the freedom and flexibility that cloud working can offer probably isn’t for you.
(5) You don’t want to waste resources on the latest technology fad
In your years of experience, you’ve seen many a tech bubble burst, heard all the latest buzzwords that disappear within a few years and seen investors rave about the latest app or start-up, only to see them fade into oblivion over time. Physical infrastructure may age over time, but it will never disappear overnight.
So are all these cloud-based solutions really a good long-term investment?
Well, the cloud is what we’ve built a solid long-term career on. In 2005 the virtualDCS team, working at the ICM Computer Group, built the first ever VMware cloud platform. We also signed the first ever UK lead initiative to provide rented VMware resources. This model is now the cloud as we know it today.
We were one of the first Veeam Cloud partners worldwide and we have been collaborating with Veeam for over ten years. We have developed new solutions whilst collaborating with them and invested heavily into Veeam technology. Everything from Veeam Cloud Connect and physical backups, to Office 365 backup and Apple Mac backup.
Believe us when we say we’re here for the long haul.
(6) Business continuity is easier to manage with physical infrastructure
The cloud isn’t tangible, you can’t see your business systems and data when they are hosted in the cloud. What if something goes wrong? What if someone somewhere presses delete and you lose everything, right?
In reality, the most likely I.T. disaster is actually server hardware failure or the corruption of critical data.
virtualDCS can help with on-site server continuity. Our Local Recovery Appliance can be installed on your network, providing local protection for your servers and your data. This is done by replicating your servers to the appliance using a variety of virtualisation technologies. Once operational, the appliance can take the role of any of your servers while still providing protection to the others. Read more about our cloud disaster recovery solutions here.
(7) You prefer to do your pricing manually
We get it. You like to have that personal interaction and human intervention in the pricing process.
But manual pricing can be really time consuming. Integrating your various business systems in the cloud can both save time and cut the risk of human error and bias during any business development or quotation process.
In fact, we’re so confident that cloud based pricing is the way forward, we’ve developed a new Veeam Cloud Connect pricing tool to help our clients and third party resellers to quote quickly and accurately. (If you deliver I.T. solutions as a service to your clients, feel free to give it a go.)
If you’ve read this far, then you must be giving some serious thought to cloud services. If you’d like to talk to an expert and see how this might work in your business, we’d love to speak with you.
We provide training, advice and consultancy as well as delivering solutions. We walk all our clients through the setup process and provide 24/7 qualified technical support and platform monitoring.
Call today for a free informal discussion on 03453 888 327 or email enquiries@virtualDCS.co.uk.
We aim to be the best Veeam Cloud provider. But don’t just take our word for it. Here’s what Veeam have to say:
As a Gold VSP partner, virtualDCS has demonstrated knowledge of Veeam products, and we’re confident in their ability to deliver Veeam-powered availability solutions.
They continually demonstrate the ability to enable their customers to meet the demands of an Always-On Enterprise, with any data, in any app, on any cloud. – Greg Baily, Director of Channels, Veeam Software UK and Ireland.
