Life in The Clouds – A Small Business Success Story

Two weeks ago, I was approached by a new company to set up file storage, email, and calendaring for five users. Eventually, I imagine they’ll want a website and some other web-based services. Generally speaking, the traditional approach to this problem would be to convince the company to purchase a small business server running these functions in-house; specifically, Microsoft’s Small Business Server (SBS). The SBS server would then be configured to manage these functions.

Aside from the labor to stage and deploy the server, additional expenses would be incurred. PC’s would need to be “joined” to the new server, and the network would need to be appropriately configured to allow for email and web-based traffic. Further, a backup solution would need to be introduced to provide some redundancy to the data stored on the server. They would need an anti-virus and anti-spam application for the mail server. And the server would have to be “hardened” – this is an additional step that secures the server as it transacts with other unknown computers on the Internet.

All told, the investment for the small business would traditionally be fairly high:

• Approximate cost for a small business server ($1,700)
• Approximate cost for SBS licensing for five users ($800)
• Approximate cost for a local backup solution ($200)
• Approximate cost for the antivirus/anti spam solution on year one ($300)
• Approximate labor costs associated with managing the PC’s, staging and configuring the server, and “hardening” the server against security risk ($700)

Therefore, a start-up company like this would be out – approximately – $3,700 to gain this capability of calendaring, email, and file storage.  They would be making this investment in technology even though tech isn’t the core competency, and they’d be paying somebody like me for on-going maintenance associated with the server and the network.

Instead of going this route, I recommended a different setup. I advised that we create their domain and host the domain on Google Apps. Google Apps is a software as a service (SAAS) application. It is a professionally-managed service from Google. It securely handles email, calendaring, web-based services, file sharing, and instant messaging applications. Instead of purchasing a new server, we could use Google to host all of the company’s needs. It took me fifteen minutes to create the domain for the new company and another 1.5 hours to set up the new domain services under Google. Within that two-hour time frame, I had the five users setup with all of the desired features under their new domain. Costs:

• Approximate domain registration cost ($20)
• Approximate cost to setup 5 users on Google Apps – year one  ($50/user for 1 year) ($250)
• Approximate labor cost total ($240)

The math here is pretty compelling: the same capabilities at 1/7th the cost, and they gained immediate capability after those two hours. I didn’t need to manage their network or their PC’s to use the system – it was available immediately, on any platform (Mac, Linux, or PC).  Their data is secure, professionally managed by Google and backed up by Google. Further, Google’s native email filtering takes care of the anti-virus and anti-spam problem without additional expense. And they can manage their files, email, calendaring from any computer that has Internet access – they can share their client with people inside their company, or, with customers, or anyone on the Web.  Any PC or device, like cell phones, can interact with Google natively. And to add/remove users or to set permissions on stuff, they don’t need me for that – they can manage that themselves entirely through Google.

Finally, Google has a lot of extra web-based features like blogging, videos, websites, and website analytics that can eventually be integrated – at no additional cost – with the company’s services, improving their Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and viral marketing strategies. And my job has changed as a consultant. Instead of managing the box (the server), the value my value is in securing PC’s and helping them integrate knowledge-based services into a single web-enabled platform managed by somebody else – Google – and at fractions of costs relative to what their competitors are spending for the same capability.

Now that’s competitive advantage. That’s using technology strategically. I had them setup in hours instead of days. It transfers IT out of their hands because it’s not what they do best, and to somebody who does it best, like Google, who can maintain it at a cost much lower than what they could normally do on their own. It contains and reduces security risks, and transisitions the risk of disaster recovery away from them, again lowering costs. Now the company is “in the clouds”, operating entirely off of Google, working anywhere they have an Internet connection, and not managing a server. That’s a cost-containment edge that can help any company get a leg-up on the competition in an economy like this one.

R

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