I was watching a video from Salesforce.com the other day and their Senior VP of Service Cloud, Alex Dayon, made a very simple but important point about why businesses need to move to cloud-based services.
The days of people exchanging information only with people in their company are over. The web has become the central storage place of all information.
The context of Alex’s comments are around customer service but the concept can easily be applied to other areas such as project management, accounting (time tracking), or document management.
The web has become social and its the fabric that connects all businesses. So logically the data that businesses need to exchange with other business should be in the cloud where it can be accessed more easily (which does not mean less secure).
The client/server model with all data behind a company’s firewall becomes a hindrance to sharing data with others. And its an ongoing cost that can be significantly reduced.
Securely store you data in the cloud where everyone who you choose to have access to it, can access it.
This makes it easier for your employees to work from any location. It makes it easier to share data with clients. It makes it easier to know what your clients are saying about you–one of the great new features of the Salesforce Service Cloud.
Move away from servers you own and maintain and open your business up to the cloud. If will increase your company’s agility, reduce its IT risk, reduce your IT costs, it will make it easier to do business, and your data will be more secure.