Daniel Mitchell's Blog

Improving Data Security in the Cloud

Since my last article on cloud computing, interest with our clients has continued to grow, as have the offerings to small business with accounting solutions from New Zealand based Xero and project management from PBWorks as key examples. These join the longstanding solutions from longer established players such as Salesforce and companies hosting MS Exchange and MS CRM.

The improved resilience is now well understood, but the greatest concern from SMEs looking at cloud computing continues to be the perceived lack of security, or more accurately, privacy of their data. The British Computer Society continues to raise concerns but what most worried small businesses are forgetting, is that leading SAAS applications actually provide vastly better security than they could ever afford themselves internally. SAAS applications such as Salesforce and PBWorks have independently audited servers, ensuring proper separation of data between their clients as well as security appliances and reviews superior to those commonly in pace with SMEs.

Providing you choose your SAAS or Cloud Application provider carefully and ask the questions about security and audit processes in place, you should be able to IMPROVE the security of your data by moving it to the cloud.

Wiki for Small Business - Collaboration in the Cloud

A Wiki is a managed set of web pages that can be collaborated on by a group of people. People still think of Wikis as public on-line encyclopaedias, Wikipedia being the most famous, but in fact a wiki can rapidly be implemented with no technical expertise as the next practical stage in document collaboration for a small business. There are a number of providers, such as PBWiki, that sell the product as true SaaS (Software as a Service) packages requiring no software or configuration to your own servers or PCs.

Businesses and individuals are already comfortable using Google Documents as an easy way to manage collaboration on documents, to centralise storage of these documents, and to provide some backup and security. A private Wiki for a company can be an even better alternative.

For little cost, a team can store large quantities of documents, which can be easily searched, rapidly amended from anywhere with an internet connection and automatically backed up, often with significantly more resilience than is normally within the scope of small businesses. A wiki will automatically track changes to these pages and allow you to compare or revert to an earlier version. At Lifeline IT, we use a PBWiki for our technical documentation and internal policies, but wikis are well suited to any situation where a business has several people contributing to sets of changing documents including project planning, building "how to" articles and for public or private knowledge bases.

Cloud Apps and SaaS: Business Continuity vs Cheap Connectivity

I often look into getting databases or applications hosted for clients. Resilience and reliability are generally the key drivers for this and for sure, a secure data centre is safer than a standard server in a typical office. I have looked at some further pros and cons in an earlier article.

As a result of its popularity, there is a trend for more use by small business of SaaS (Software as a Service) and hosted, or web based applications generally, including hosted Exchange and hosted CRM - the IoD is pushing both of these for its small business members.

But ... internet connections are not getting better, due to cost there is a major resistance to leased lines and in many cases ADSL is just not good enough - response times to fix problems at exchanges and questionable technical support services should often rule out ADSL as a connection that a business depends upon.

As soon as you move your critical data off site, the internet connection probably becomes mission critical, however, an ADSL line is probably far more vulnerable and may well take longer to get repaired than a server in your office.

Therefore, if you are a small business moving towards hosted applications but don't want to spend thousands every year on leased lines, you need to consider alternatives:

• 3G data via a mobile network - as well as 3G cards for PCs and laptops, there are some business firewalls that will take a 3G data card and provide a cost effective 'fall-back'.
• WiMax - a wireless based internet service provision for business. These are becoming available in major cities, provide really good SLAs and excellent resilience at about the same cost as SDSL.
• It's normally regarded as waste of time having two ADSL lines as they are likely to come from the same exchange, however, if you can get a second cable based DSL, this can make a good backup.
• A more dispersed workforce - encourage home working or at least provide the facility for staff to do so as part of a DR plan.

Other articles and information:
An article on Business Continuity and SaaS by John Gannon
Salesforce.com
Urban WiMax

Host or Buy? A Discussion on Hosted Applications and Services

Hosted applications and services are really popular right now. These are software systems or facilities that are located at a data centre that organisations access typically via the internet, and can include anything from full servers, mail servers, CRM software or even telephone systems.

Compared with the traditional alternative of software and hardware purchase, typically initial setup costs are low and little local infrastructure is required other than a broadband connection and a PC or Mac. The most popular applications include Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft CRM, Salesforce and now even VoIP telephony. Sounds interesting? Here are some of the key 'Pros' and 'Cons'.

Pros

• Low setup costs - A typical CRM application for a small business may cost several thousand pounds in server hardware and software, by comparison hosted services can cost from as little as £35 per user per month.

• Scalable - Users can typically be added either in a main office or at a remote office very easily as the host infrastructure is normally huge compared with a locally hosted environment.

• Fast deployment - Servers and systems are already set up and in place.

• Tax deductible - Rental not capital purchase (but I'm not an accountant!)

• Ease of management - typically backup and maintenance is included.

Cons

• Only as good as your internet connection - If you have a basic broadband internet connection, then you are risking availability of your connection to these hosted services. Not a problem if you have lots of remote workers but if you are hosting your phone system and lose internet for five days, your phones go too!

• Long term costs may well be higher - I have found about 18 to 24 months is the breakeven point on most installations we have carried out.

• Limited interface to existing systems - hosted applications may have limited connectivity with your local databases and integration can be more costly.

• Flexibility - in a shared environment products are typically 'one size fits all'.

• Data transfer speeds - again, only as good as your internet service, transferring data to a server on your network could be 100 times faster than an upload via internet.

We are getting lots of enquiries on hosted services, it really boils down to having an appropriate internet connection; with leased lines costing £4000 plus per annum, this can swallow a significant proportion of the savings. Perhaps a better way to look at these services is to examine if the advantages stand on their own without the cost savings.
 
There is no doubt that use of hosted services is increasing rapidly and with increased offerings from major players including Google and Microsoft, the sector will continue to expand. In a further article I will talk about forthcoming changes and development in internet connectivity - it will have to keep up in quality and speed!

***** Edited 27/03/09*****

Take a look at Law.com's legal technology blog article on CRM / SaaS in a legal environment ...