YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- Within the next five years, upward of 80% of businesses will use cloud computing in some form, most surveys find.
This year alone, Microsoft says, it will conduct one million audits of companies that use Office and charge those who don’t use the cloud-based Office 365 more for the software.
“They're not doing it to make money. They're doing it to push users to the cloud,” Mike Meloy, CEO of DRS, said Thursday at the Youngstown Warren Regional Chamber's InDepth event, held at ITT Technical Institue. DRS provides data storage centers to businesses in the Mahoning Valley
“You're going to have to upgrade and move to the cloud or there will be stiff penalties for running things locally,” Meloy said. “It will much, much cheaper and more efficient to move to the cloud.”
While use of the cloud varies from business to business, Meloy said, in essence a business pays a lower price to use an infrastructure that furnishes storage and backup functions rather than have its own and more costly small-scale data storage system.
“[The cloud] is the investment of billions of dollars in infrastructure where you only have to buy what you need when you need it. It's a small price [for business owners],” he explained.
For some who heard Meloy, any price they would pay to change to cloud computing would be well worth it.
“By law, I have to keep files for five years. The old-school way to keep files is to put them in a filing box. Having a cloud would be great for me,” said Jason Farulla, an agent with Real Living Real Estate. “This is something we'll definitely be looking at because I have a lot of files with a lot of personal information.”
At present, Farulla keeps the physical copies of all his paperwork at home in boxes backed up digitally on an external hard drive that he keeps with him at all times.
Cloud computing typically falls into four categories: public, private, hybrid and community.
The public cloud is storage space offered everyone through companies such as Amazon and Google. A private cloud can be used by only one organization, such as a company that has its computers connected to its own servers.
It’s the hybrid that Meloy believes will be the most useful to many business owners.
“The hybrid leverages everything a business may need from a compliancy or audit standpoint to ensure that business needs are met,” he said. “Some things like email may be better on the Internet [a public cloud], where accounting may be better on a private cloud.”
Email, he added, is the most important service for businesses to have based in some form of cloud computing. Those that don't back up their emails risk losing all recent business records should their email system fail.
“The majority of people, in their daily business, their current business, is all in email,” Meloy said. “If you're in sales, then email probably has all of your contacts, all of your paperwork and all of your records. If email goes down, that's all gone.”
For those wary of moving to cloud computing to back up their documents, Meloy noted, the price could be low as long as computer systems are upgraded and maintained properly.
“It's a predictable cost. The question is whether you keep software up-to-date and computers maintained. If you just use computers and never pay for new things, it'll probably cost you more,” Meloy said.
One system he discussed, Amazon Glacier, is designed to act as a secondary backup should the originals and first copies stored on the cloud be lost. Glacier costs just two cents per month per gigabyte stored.
“That's meant as a last resort. If you're business burns down or something like that, that's what it's there for,” Meloy said. “They charge you more to take [your files] out, but it's only as a last resort.”
Another benefit of the cloud, he added, is that storage space can be added whenever it's needed and that it's entirely mobile.
“You don't need permanent equipment. An accounting firm may have a ramp up time from Jan. 1 to April 15 where they have to up their staff and resources. They can temporarily add servers and remove them on an as-needed basis,” he said. “You can get it at home, at the office, on vacation. It doesn't matter. It's available wherever.”
Pictured: Mike Meloy, CEO of DRS.
Copyright 2015 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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