How to put a business of 30-40 clients 'into the cloud'

5tephen

5tephen

5tephen

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I am reading about local businesses moving their entire operation to the cloud and am wondering what sort of platform would have to be in place to allow this, what sort of service providers would provide such facilities and what are the basic principles in getting something like this up and running.

One is an accountants practice that has 3-4 offices with a total of about 40 users that moved everything to a cloud-hosted platform, hosting the obvious things like email and antivirus, but also LOB applications like Sage, Digita, payroll programs. What operating system would be running this, how are things like desktop profiles and program settings moved across, and what environment do the client computers run?

And do you think such a process would be worthwhile these days? I have a client that is wanting to upgrade their setup of about 40 machines and still likes the notion of keeping everything on-site but is asking me to look at the pros and cons of moving their setup to the cloud. I can't help but think that a decent Dell T610 (for example) with plenty of power and a 5-Yr warranty for this number of users is a better bet, in terms of overall cost over 5 years vs paying a high monthly cost for a hosted service. Not to forget a much simpler migration to a new in-house server (I've done several SBS migrations with relative ease). I am very open to criticism of the above :)
 
Of course its worth it for some companies, just google cloud services and you will find plenty of places doing different deals.

It will all run on a hypervisor and be packaged up depending on what the requirement would be.

Bye bye CapEx.

VDI is the way forward imo, be it in the cloud or in house.
 
Some pros for moving "into the cloud":

1. Network speeds and broadband in general are getting better all the time, this is bridging the latency argument between hosted and local.
2. Fixed monthly costs - typically you pay on consumption so the costs are predictable.
3. Support from the hosted suppliers. No need to know everything about everything you are running.
4. Distribution of users matters less. f.ex you have lots of small offices with only a few users, it doesn't make sense to sink lots of cash into infrastructure in these offices. With hosted solutions which are accesible just with an internet connection, this is a massive benefit.
5. Most hosted solutions offer some kind of control panel for management, means that even non-technical staff can administer your users without having to know which commands to run/where to go to run them.
6. Big one for me that sells itself, but is sometimes overlooked - Maintenance/Patching/Backups are taken out of your hands.
7. Any problems are down to the hosted suppliers to fix.
8. Hosted suppliers generally have HA solutions in place, most people hosting their own kit can't afford to shell out for multiple servers to ensure high availability. If people hosting their own kit only have one DC for example and that dies, they are a bit screwed.

Cons:

1. Local is generally going to respond faster, as Point 1 of my Pros though, this gap is being bridged all the time.
2. Heavily reliant on having an active internet connection. No Internet = no access to services.
3. Less control - Hosted solutions generally limit the control you have. Customisations aren't straightforward, as in general shared solutions run a standard set of protocols.
4. Your data is stored with a 3rd party, so you need to ensure whoever you are dealing with is following data protection protocols. Even the giants like Sony can get hacked though. Mind you, your local data could just as easily be targetted I suppose, just that the hackers probably don't bother with the smaller targets so much.
5. It can become a game of who do you call if something dies, especially if you have a lot of services with different suppliers.

Struggling to come up with any more cons at the moment. For me the pros outweigh the cons in general. I work for a hosted supplier and have seen firsthand a steady growth of our customer base.

The recession has actually lead to us getting more business, as the cost models are predictable, people are actually saving money by going hosted in lots of cases.
 
Thanks, has given me a bit to think over for the past couple of days. The customer I am thinking about only has a 1.2Mb DSL connection, they can't get fibre and the next bracket up is a 10Mb dedicated line at £600-£700 a month. Would 30-40 clients run satisfactorily over a 1Mb connection?

Also, how does the VDI setup work for general use and for software upgrades - I assume that if a new version of Sage, for example, comes out, they'll have to upload the CD to a storage area of their hosted server and run the installer from there? Does it work similarly to Terminal Server where everyone is working off the same installation, so it only has to be done once, or does everyone truly have their own separate virtual computer to work with (and therefore several machines have to be upgraded?)

I'd like a couple of suggestions for private cloud providers that some of you have worked with - I'd rather go on personal recommendations than picking companies who appear highest in Google. I'm downloading an evaluation of Microsoft Private Cloud at the minute - how would Microsoft themselves fare in this sort of market?
 
I wouldn't say 30-40 people on a 1.2mb connection wouldn't be great.

Also you talk about sage, do you know sage also have a in the cloud service?
 
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You're missing another key component and that is the upload. Working on massive spreadsheets, databases, etc. in the cloud is going to be a nightmare when it comes to saving.

Personally I can't think of anything worse than having all of my customers data off-site whereby you are hoping they are conforming to data protection. If it does get hacked then I wouldn't want to be on the receiving end. It could, literally, kill a small business if you had to go to your customers and tell them that you had been hacked.



M.
 
I think with the customer running off 1.2Mb that there are too many clients running off that line and that their next step would be just installing a new in-house server. Their client machines are pretty beefy and up to date so they may as well get the use of that. That speed reference is a useful link Saundie, thanks.

m4cc45 - I would have thought that all the data is sitting on a cloud server too, so once the data has all been transferred at the outset, it doesn't really matter about upload speed? Surely they are just viewing the screen of a computer that is working on local data?

I do wonder what the user experience is like for the likes of Excel, say, when scrolling down hundreds of rows to quickly jump between cells. I use LogMeIn Rescue which is fine for the majority of remote assistance cases but if showing a user something in Excel or say AutoCAD or anything that has frequent screen movements, the multiple small delays in screen response is infuriating at my end.

I'm going to give it a test run to see if it will suit any other clients in the future, so if there are any suggestions for reputable companies that some of you have worked with, that would be great. Already I've been asked for quotes by two other companies looking to set up a small (~5 users) fully cloud-hosted small business solution. Some cloud providers I've looked at are just white-labelling services from bigger companies and it's hard to find ones that are higher up the chain, so to speak.
 
Eulogy said:
2. Heavily reliant on having an active internet connection. No Internet = no access to services.
Click to expand...

That cuts both ways, it's only reliant on an active internet connection. So if your internet dies, power goes off, building catches fire, send everybody home and they can work from there. Or anywhere.

I would also ask, how many business today can work effectively for very long without internet anyway?
 
teaboy5 said:
I wouldn't say 30-40 people on a 1.2mb connection wouldn't be great.

Also you talk about sage, do you know sage also have a in the cloud service?
Click to expand...

I think you are being rather generous when you say "wouldn't be great" I would have thought you would want 10x that...

and if you are only getting 1.2mb over adsl when you should be getting 8mb it means you are way down the line and more likely to have connectivity issues
 
To any of you that use cloud hosted VDI's, what are your rought monthly costs for server storage and for each client desktop? And some providers allow you to pay for the likes of MS Office on a monthly basis - what cost are these provided at? I am waiting on quotes back from a couple of providers but would like to know what the going rate is.
 
Just thought I would bring this thread back up again, as I've another question relating to Microsoft Private Cloud - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/evalcenter/hh505660.aspx
This looks to be a solution that can be put on a blank hosted infrastructure of some kind. Would this be worth looking into, as it would give me a finer level of control of the system, e.g. adding my own programs to the App Controller? With other cloud providers I've looked at I'm stuck with pre-set programs e.g. MS Office, Sage etc, but if a separate package outside of this is to be used, I have to apply to get it installed by them. Updating that would be a pain.
Or is there too much of a management overhead, with such a large suite of programs to implement, to be worth considering it?
 
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