While the cloud has gained a lot of traction over the past few years, many small businesses remain hesitant to put their data, applications and infrastructure in the cloud. But the business benefits of the cloud – from cost savings to scalability – are not always understood by small businesses. Misperceptions about cloud continue to persist, including the notion that small businesses are flocking to the cloud in droves.
In fact, a 2013 small business survey conducted by Brother revealed that 46 percent of small businesses understood the concept of the cloud “somewhat,” while 27 percent didn’t understand it well or at all. In addition, 42 percent of small business owners said that they aren’t using the cloud for their business.
One of the best ways small businesses can start taking advantage of the cloud is with storage, yet many remain hesitant to do so. According to a recent study by network attached storage vendor Drobo, 46 percent of small businesses in the U.S. don’t find public cloud storage a perfect fit for backup solutions primarily because of limited bandwidth and quality of network issues for site-to-site disaster recovery solutions. Instead, many SMBs are seeking hybrid onsite and offsite backup and storage solutions, according to the study.
The biggest cloud misperception that persists among businesses is around security. Yet for small businesses, the opposite may be true. In fact, desire to maintain ownership of data was a primary factor for small-to-mid-sized American businesses avoiding cloud services, according to a recent Techaisle study.
In a separate cloud security study by NetIQ (News - Alert), 51 percent of respondents believe that the cloud increases data security, but 70 percent believe that it poses a risk to sensitive information they hold.
However, data in the cloud is actually more secure than on-premises, but security breaches publicized in the media generate more apprehension into the minds of those who are already wary about moving their data to the cloud.
In reality, migrating to the cloud provides businesses with enhanced security. For example, Aplicor has delivered 99.999 percent uptime history over the past seven years and the company holds independent information security certifications from the federal government (NIST C&A) and International Standards Organizations (ISO 27001:2005).
Aplicor’s CloudSuite is hybrid tenancy, which provides security, flexibility and reliability needed for compliance in highly regulated industries – with the low cost benefit of sharing non-security critical application resources, according to the company’s website.
Still not convinced? Aplicor also has an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program in place with roles, functions and full-time resources dedicated to information security.
Click here to read about some of the benefits your business can see when migrating to the cloud via Aplicor’s CloudSuite.
Edited by Jamie Epstein