Bevlin Blog

The promise of cloud platforms, where the provider handles most of the work, is incredibly enticing. After all, why wouldn’t you want to move your data to the cloud, where you don’t have to worry about backups, security, or server crashes?  This perspective also makes it sound like your business is off the hook, but this is not necessarily the case. 

This is why you need to review the terms and conditions of your cloud provider’s services before you make any assumptions as to what’s covered and what’s not by your service level agreement. Today, we want to cover some of the misconceptions that frequently pop up with cloud services so you can make better decisions moving forward.

If you ask ten different IT guys to define "the cloud,” you’ll probably get twelve different answers involving scalability, elasticity, and other buzzwords that don't actually help you run your business on a Wednesday morning.

Let's strip away the jargon. The cloud isn't some magical, invisible ether. It’s essentially just entrusting someone else—usually a massive corporation like Microsoft, Google, or Amazon—to manage the physical computer for you.

Instead of having a humming, heat-generating server box locked in your broom closet, you’re renting space on a much more powerful, much more secure server in a data center somewhere else.

Does your business still rely on the physical server closet? This space is essentially a physical anchor that requires dedicated cooling, constant hardware monitoring, and a team ready to handle any issues with the machines themselves, making it perhaps the most expensive real estate you own for your business. More agile businesses are forsaking the server closet in favor of a solution that doesn’t require a physical footprint: the cloud.

Some businesses find it preferable to host their servers on-site, but they fail to ask themselves if the server is a reliable asset or a financial drain. For years, the argument was in favor of on-premise hardware due to control and a one-time purchase price. But the landscape has shifted since, and now business owners are prioritizing Total Cost of Ownership over control. Do you really know how much your physical servers are costing you, and do you think they are worth that price point?

Sometimes it feels like a lot to ask for small businesses to invest in new technology, even if that technology is beneficial to their mission. There’s a better way to access the right hardware for the job, though, and it stems from the cloud. By moving some of your hardware to the cloud, you can save money and frustrations during implementation and operation, all while enjoying greater security.