SME owners: You'd be crazy not to consider managed services in cloud era

With cloud computing moving into the mainstream, small businesses have an opportunity like never before to benefit from high-performance, advanced applications at an often ridiculously low cost. Gone are the days when a complex application has to cost tens or hundreds of thousands of rands. Today, you can have it all for a couple of hundred or perhaps a few thousand. And the reason for that is the Internet.

Cloud computing is a new term for a concept that is practically as old as the Internet itself. Almost anything that can be accessed over the Internet can be considered a cloud service. A managed service, on the other hand, is one which has a level of control exerted over it to achieve a desired outcome. In the case of IT services delivered to business, the desired outcome will be encapsulated in the service level agreement. It will include attributes such as reliability, performance and availability.

Let's put the two together; today, you can buy the applications you need to run every aspect of your business from a cloud services provider. Google is the best known such services provider. While most of us know Google as a search engine (which is a classic cloud service), it is much more than that; its Gmail is a widely used cloud-based e-mail service. All your mail 'lives' in the cloud, available for you to access it when you need it.

But there is much more than that. While e-mail and a search engine serves as ready examples of how cloud works, it is possible to get every application you need to run your business. You need nothing more than a notebook or PC from which to access such applications, and all the information sits in the cloud.

Some may wonder about the security and the safety of that information. Or the fact that access might be an issue if the connection is down.

However, these issues are, to all intents and purposes, solved. Security is paramount, but sorted, with techniques for data protection which are watertight (including encryption and password protection). Data stored in the cloud is far safer than anything a small business could afford; ever heard of anyone losing their Gmail? And in terms of connectivity, the critical link between you and your applications and data, it is advisable to have at least two types of connection to achieve a level of redundancy (which means when one is down, you still have the other).

It is thanks to advances in connectivity, primarily, that this sort of approach to equipping your business with the necessary software to perform is possible. It all relies on high-speed Internet connectivity as a foundational layer.

But the cloud managed service also depends on having someone to help. Most applications require a level of customisation and support if they are to deliver optimal value to your business. And, crucially, you need someone who knows the technology environment and can accurately take the right stuff from everything that is available on the Internet, match it to your needs and help you to achieve optimal value and a slick business operation.

Managed services. It was once the preserve of large, fancy companies, along with large, fancy software implementations. It is within reach of the SME today, it can make your business run so well that it gets a distinct competitive advantage.

And it just doesn't cost that much any more.