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Is your server or servers getting old? Have you pushed it to the end of its lifespan? Have you reached that stage where its time to do something about it? Join the crowd. Youre now at that decision point that so many other business people are finding themselves this year. And the decision is this: do you replace that old server with a new serveror do you go to: the cloud.

Everyones talking about the cloud nowadays so youve got to consider it, right? This could be a great new thing for your company! Youve been told that the cloud enables companies like yours to be more flexible and save on their IT costs. It allows free and easy access to data for employees from wherever they are, using whatever devices they want to use. Maybe youve seen the recent survey by accounting software maker MYOB that found that small businesses that adopt cloud technologies enjoy higher revenues. Or perhaps youve stumbled on this analysis that said that small businesses are losing money as a result of ineffective IT management that could be much improved by the use of cloud based services. Or the poll of more than 1,200 small businesses by technology reseller CDW CDW which discovered that cloud users cite cost savings, increased efficiency and greater innovation as key benefits and that across all industries, storage and conferencing and collaboration are the top cloud services and applications.

So its time to chuck that old piece of junk and take your company to the cloud, right? Welljust hold on.

Theres no question that if youre a startup or a very small company or a company that is virtual or whose employees are distributed around the world, a cloud based environment is the way to go. Or maybe youve got high internal IT costs or require more computing power. But maybe thats not you. Maybe your company sells pharmaceutical supplies, provides landscaping services, fixes roofs, ships industrial cleaning agents, manufactures packaging materials or distributes gaskets. You are not featured in Fast Company and you have not been invited to presenting at the next Disrupt conference. But you know you represent the very core of small business in America. I know this too. You are just like one of my companys 600 clients. And what are these companies doing this year when it comes time to replace their servers?

These very smart owners and managers of small and medium sized businesses who have existing applications running on old servers are not going to the cloud. Instead,theyvebeen buying new servers.

Wait, buying new servers? What about the cloud?

At no less than six of my clients in the past 90 days it was time to replace servers. They had all waited as long as possible, conserving cash in a slow economy, hoping to get the most out of their existing machines. Sound familiar? But the servers were showing their age, applications were running slower and now as the companies found themselves growing their infrastructure their old machines were reaching their limit. Things were getting to a breaking point, and all six of my clients decided it was time for a change. So they all moved to cloud, right?

Nope. None of them did. None of them chose the cloud. Why? Because all six of these small business owners and managers came to the same conclusion: it was just too expensive. Sorry media. Sorry tech world. But this is the truth. This is whats happening in the world of established companies.

Consider the options. All of my clients evaluated cloud based hosting services from Amazon, Microsoft and Rackspace. They also interviewed a handful of cloud based IT management firms who promised to move their existing applications (Office, accounting, CRM, databases) to their servers and manage them offsite. All of these popular options are viable and make sense, as evidenced by their growth in recent years. But when all the smoke cleared, all of these services came in at about the same price: approximately $100 per month per user. This is what it costs for an existing company to move their existing infrastructure to a cloud based infrastructure in 2013. Weve got the proposals and weve done the analysis.

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Do You Replace Your Server Or Go To The Cloud? The Answer ...