Cloud Hosting

The structural shift to working from home for large parts of the workforce thanks to COVID lockdowns has also driven cloud uptake. Remote working has created the need for better internet bandwidth, which many companies dont have the resources to provide on their own.

Rick Swancott, general manager sales at Servers Australia.Servers Australia

While an NBN connection is adequate for day-to-day business use, it is often insufficient to allow a large number of employees to access the system remotely. Data centres, however, have hundreds of gigabits of internet connectivity and provide an interconnected ecosystem with many providers, so there is practically no limit to the number of staff who can work remotely, Swancott says.

Many companies are starting to adopt their own server in the cloud. Instead of having a server in a cupboard in their office, for instance, they are using a server at a data centre managed by a cloud provider.

Accountancy firms or practically any businesses that are utilising these types of services, they dont want to be thinking about their computer infrastructure. Theyre thinking about how they make money from selling accounting services or whatever else, Swancott says.

Setting up and building a virtual server in the cloud can be done in half an hour and there is no capital outlay, compared with days or weeks for an office-based server, which involves ordering hardware, trying to connect it all together, buying switches and the firewalls.

It takes a lot of complexities out of running infrastructure, Swancott says. You dont have this huge outlay of capital expenditure to go and buy all the equipment or arrange leasing or whatever it is that you decide to do. Its a simple monthly fee - put down your credit card and off you go.

Thomas Teitzel of Bespoke Business Software has also noticed a migration to the cloud.

Thomas Teitzel of Bespoke Business Software.Bespoke Business Software

BBS uses cloud infrastructure to run its clients Enterprise Management Systems, helping the clients to manage their customer relationships, payroll, inventory and so on.

Since the COVID pandemic, theres been an increase in the uptake of customers transitioning to the cloud because it enables them the flexibility to upscale or decrease as needed, he says, adding that customers who werent using the cloud struggled with staff working from home during the COVID lockdowns.

I dont think the need for cloud is going to decrease. I think, if anything, itll certainly increase, he says.

Providing our Enterprise Management Systems via the cloud is a change from installing servers inat each clients office, where any changes to the system had to be made individually to each server. We can just make a change to our ERP and its delivered across the entire client base, Teitzel says.

Its an example of the flexibility that the cloud can provide, as is the ability for a business to take on more or fewer computing and storage power as they need it.

If theres more demand at a particular time of the day or season, say June 30th, where you need to scale up your staffing and resources, you have that flexibility, he says. You can increase and decrease the resources assigned to your hardware for those particular periods.

Cloud providers also provide security and data protection services, in two different ways, encompassing protection and recovery.

The first part is what Servers Australias Swancott calls security hardening, protecting data and applications from intrusion by ensuring that virus software and operating systems patches are up to date.

There is also physical security. Data centres are fireproof, secure buildings, with back-up power and cooling systems.

The second is to have a solid data recovery plan and back-ups.

Where there is an intrusion and you do get locked out, you are able to click a button and restore your entire solution from a snapshot that was taken pre the intrusion, Swancott says.

You can have a whole data centre in Australia go offline and we would instantly have services available and operational in another data centre in Australia. Where you used to get business loss from operating within your own environments if they went down, now you can protect against that.

Servers Australia in partnership with VMware have a range of solutions to assist SMBs with their cloud infrastructure ambitions. Virtual Data Centre is one of those solutions and more information can be found here.

The rest is here:
Cloud transitions servers out of the office cupboard - The Australian Financial Review