Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) cannot afford to invest in secure IT infrastructure and systems that larger organisations enjoy; but, by adopting cloud services, they have access to more advanced solutions than they'd be able to get if they bought on-premises appliances.
According to Steven Cohen, managing director of Sage Pastel, one out of five South African SMEs experiences some form of data loss once a year, most commonly as a result of accidents and natural disasters, data corruption or theft of computing devices.
Cohen believes most of the SMEs can limit these losses by moving their applications and the associated applications to the cloud.
He adds cloud offers an opportunity for SMEs to neaten up their IT environments and eliminate many of the traditional risks that lead to data loss and system outages.
According to a World Wide Worx 2014 SME Survey, the uptake of cloud-based products in SA has been slow with about 22% of SMEs in SA using cloud services - up from just 9% in 2012. Even with the slow adoption rate, it's a concept shaping SME competitiveness in the country and resource small business owners ought to consider, reveals the report.
The IDC 2013 Global CloudTracker Survey also states small organisations are behind in cloud adoption because of an overall lack of resources within the IT department that can help make certain processes ready for the cloud.
"Many SMEs are uncomfortable with the idea of moving their data to the cloud because it means thinking about applications and information in a new way," says Cohen. "But using the cloud for accounting and other applications means keeping their information stored in a secure data centre where the professionals look after it."
Cohen says despite the illusion of control SMEs get from managing their own PCs with their applications and data on a hard drive; this is often the most risky way to manage their information.
"Without the right skills at their disposal, many SMEs find it difficult to keep their data backed up, their applications patched, and their hardware physically safe from theft and fire."
Unlike a small business, a cloud provider can afford to double up on servers, storage, power and telecoms infrastructure, says Cohen. The service provider can provide far higher uptime for the company's application as a power outage or Internet failure will not affect productivity, he adds.
Cohen points out SMEs need an automated system that allows them to back up their data to a secure, remote location "And the easiest and most affordable way to get that is to use cloud-based solutions. It's an easy way to tidy up the IT mess," he concludes.
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