A global public relations firm with 120 employees transitions to cloud computing and the IT director lives to tell about the potential relief that software-as-a-service offers to IT.

The promise of cloud computing has been around for years.

Like any new technology, it’s taken time for the vendor community to work out the kinks and get cloud computing ready for prime time.

While cloud computing comes in numerous flavors, what I’m going to address and what’s typically most relevant to small or mid-sized businesses is software-as-a-service (SaaS). This means that applications are hosted by service providers instead of running on your hardware in the office.

This is a big deal.

My company — a global PR firm with offices across the United States, Asia, and Europe — depends on extremely high service levels from the IT function. As a one-woman band managing our technology operation, I’m always striving to simplify IT deployment, but it can’t be done at the expense of functionality.

This is what led me to evaluate cloud computing for our office applications. After doing my homework, three options were left on the table: Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.

We opted to go with Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) solution which was best-suited for our size, reach, and 24×7 response requirements. This said, you should take the time to evaluate all three options because each provider offers a little different functionality.

Microsoft BPOS is a fully deployed, cloud-based version of Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications Online, and Office Live Meeting, which allows us to offload basic functions such as e-mail and Web-based collaboration tools.

Continue Reading…Inc.com

A global public relations firm with 120 employees transitions to cloud computing and the IT director lives to tell about the potential relief that software-as-a-service offers to IT.


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