Retire those servers, go virtual, save money

We used to have a server room with a rack and half a dozen servers, maybe we spent twenty to thirty thousand on the hardware (PC's, switches, hubs, Operating Systems, server licenses etc).

Three years later we started looking at replacing them and part of this process was measuring the utilisation of each server. We soon realised they were all running at less than 10% of capacity.

As an alternative we researched virtual servers (hosted, cloud etc) and realised that we could get the same computing power for less than 10% of the cost of replacement servers.

We could also repurpose funds allocated for software licensing to some software R&D to develop a customised web based customer and contract managment system, without per user licensing fees.

Not only was the cost significantly less but using data centre virtual servers also meant we lost the management overhead and increased the up time of the applications running the business.

Here are a few reasons moving your business systems to the cloud makes sense.

• Cost savings. No capital outlay, IT staff or maintenance costs
• Accessibility. Web based apps which can be accessed anywhere
• Uptime. A hosting provider will do better than you at keeping servers running
• Flexible licensing. Scale seat count or servers up or down easily
• Better software. Design software specifically to fit for your business
• Security. Hosting companies have excellent physical and network security.

To summarise, moving your business systems to cloud based platforms means you can focus on your business and benefit from I.T. not get distracted by it. The money you save can be used to invest into the business rather than being tipped into depreciating hardware and software assets.

You can have big business computing resources without having to own and run servers and all at small business prices.