There has been quite a bit of talk and hype around a concept called the cloud that, I have found, really leaves people more confused than informed. The promise of low cost, rapid scalability, no CapEx costs, and no liability to maintain a system are very promising indeed. The question to ask is how much of this is hype and how much is actually real…I believe the reality is that there is a healthy blend of both.

When we engage with new clients, one of the top issues is that their technology spending is not aligned with their business needs. While it is also common to see technology that isn’t working right, we find that this is usually an indicator that an organization’s technology spending is not tied to business needs. This misalignment results in money being wasted because it is spent in the wrong places or spending is held back until there’s an emergency, at which time, the solution is usually a patch and more expensive. When we work with clients, we seek to start with a solid understanding of business objectives and drivers. From those drivers, we factor cost vs reward to figure out if various solutions are justified or will be a waste of money. The beauty of this is that we avoid wasting money and, if we determine to move forward with a solution, we have a clear understanding of exactly why we are doing it and what we are getting out of the solution.

Five weeks ago, I sent out my first blog of the year with a statement that I was planning to hold a rhythm of adding a blog article every one to two weeks. This is the second blog of the year. I almost ran out of fingers on one hand by the time I figured out that I completely and utterly failed to meet this goal! So, why set goals at all? How do we handle failure? How do we avoid failure…or is that even the right question?

Three Years in a Row!

We take great pride in continually exceeding our clients’ expectations. In recognition of our outstanding levels of client satisfaction and innovation in the industry, we were just named, for the 3rd year in a row, by CRN, a brand of The Channel Company to their annual listing of Top Managed Service Providers (MSP). The first year, we were named in their NextGen 250 list and, for the past two years, we have been named to their MSP 500 list.

The whole emergence of cloud computing is a very interesting phenomenon. It is most definitely driven by consumers demanding more and more mobile solutions but it is also driven by something else…money. The thing that’s been interesting is that much of the cloud computing world has been rapidly dropping prices. Consequently, this is hurting their revenue…at least in the short-term. So, how does this all work and where is it going…good questions. I don’t know that I’m smart enough to answer every possible question but here are a few of my thoughts and observations.