Traditional email systems, such as Exchange, require lots of physical resources (i.e. beefed up servers), and are limited to cumbersome secure access (VPN).
Having the email server over the cloud (google, and others), can dramatically decrease the operating cost of any business.
Initially, these cost decreasing advantages were only harnessed by small businesses, but now more sizable companies are reeking the benefits of this technology. It not only brings great economy by reducing or outsourcing the company's IT department, but greatly reduces the cost of having a local server. My personal experience in moving my company's Exchange server to the cloud, saved us $75,000.00 on the first year, since our server was due to be completely upgraded.
Additionally, having the mail server on the cloud, eliminates the need of having a server administrator to maintain and troubleshoot the server every week, by backing it up, setting up new users, where the process of permission is quite labor intense, and other tasks. On the cloud, set up is painless, there's no need to set up the end user's computer, and the email account is accessible from anywhere on the planet where there's an internet connection available.
The link below, leads to a more in depth list of benefits that big businesses are seeing now in cloud computing.
http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2013/jul/25/cloud-computing-benefits-large-businesses
I think it is amazing that the cloud saved your company $75,000 in one year. A friend of mine also has a business that saved big bucks by upgrading to cloud storage. This technology is truly something for the greater good of all things business. However, as I type that it occurs to me that it could possibly be taking more jobs away than it is creating??
ReplyDeleteHi Alex,
DeleteIndeed there are pros and cons of the cloud computing to employment security.
As everything starts to have a larger independence of personnel, jobs starts to lose meaning. The ever evolving technology is decreasing the need for many professionals. As an example, look at blockbuster, that after years of market dominance, now is shutting its doors, after losing its market share to redbox.
It is a global tendency on highly technological societies to have a leaner business, where very few managers are involved in the decision making process, and in the daily operations.