By Ashley Caputo, TMCnet Web Editor

Every aspect of a small to midsized business’s IT requirements can be delivered through a cloud offering, including phone systems, e-mail, collaboration and business applications. High quality IT can now be delivered from SMBs through cloud-enabled servers to virtually anywhere their employees are in the world, which larger organizations once invested large amounts of money to deliver.

Image via Shutterstock

"The cloud has also dramatically reduced the time from ‘procurement to provision’, which provides an incredible go-to market advantage for SMBs,” says Daniel Rodriguez, CTO of United Data Technologies, which TMCnet got the chance to sit with to discuss the future of SMBs in the newfound virtual world.

For SMB owners, Rodriguez offers the top 5 tips when creating a virtual office. They are:

1. Engage with your local chambers of commerce.  Many times cloud service providers provide discounted services to chamber members.
2. Do your homework! Talk with other SMBs that have already made the jump to the cloud.  Learn from their experiences to help make the best decision for your business.
3. Maturity matters.  Look for cloud service providers that have long been delivering services and understand who their customers are.  The broader their experience, the better a service can be tailored to your specific needs.
4. Information security and privacy are important.  It is critical to understand how your service provider protects your information from loss, but more importantly from exploitation.  All of your organization’s hard work and intellectual capital can be gone in minutes if your service provider does not have an effective security posture in and around their data centers. 
5. Price should not be the sole factor in making the move to the cloud.  These decisions are truly a balancing act between cost and value.  It is important to understand what tradeoffs exist when moving from a premise based solution to the cloud.  In some cases, the dollar you save today will cost you ten down the road. 

The virtual office can benefit SMBs in a variety of forms, with the most prominent being the ability to be close to their customers, no matter where they are on the map, thanks to the ability to video chat, instant message, interact on social media, and of course, speak on the phone. It also provides a local presence in the largest markets, where in the past SMBs struggled to gain a foot hold.

Rodriguez believes that VoIP was the tipping point for voice services.  Before VoIP, customers had to rely on traditional POTS phone services and expensive digital PBX (News - Alert) networks to enable an office based phone system and call center. Now, organizations can reap the benefits of dramatically cheaper national, long-distance and international calling by leveraging an IP-based phone system.

With all these new innovations, SMB now have the power to take advantage of the tools on the market and expand in the same manner as larger enterprises without worrying about budget. What will your virtual office look like?