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Cloud Software - What do you use?
- Thread starter Kevin-shopVOX
- Start date
HulkSmash
New Member
I'm perfectly aware of what cloud computing is, so no confusion on my part. What I am asking, is why would I put mission critical data that is vital to our businesses interest, in the hands of someone else? What do I gain by doing that is my question.
In my opinion, the risk/reward just isn't there. What is the reward? To be able to see various files from anywhere in the world from various devices? I can already do that now, without having to be "in the cloud" with my storage of said data.
So what else is the reward? Having my data backed up off site. FTP has allowed that for years. No big deal there either.
So what's next? My question is really what can I do with the cloud that I can't already do, and the answer keeps coming up "Nothing".
Now, if you want to debate whether someone made some really good cloud software that fits our business needs like a glove, that's different. Just because someone designed good POS software for the cloud and skipped designing it for stand alone machines, doesn't mean it makes it the right thing to do. I have yet to hear what doing business in the cloud can do that can't already be done. Maybe there are things. I'm open to learn. Teach me
To cloud or not to cloud, we each have to find our comfort level.
You can have another thread to promote v-o-x, you have enough members here in this discussion that if you plan to have a group webinar, you can contact us.
As in Sar Bossier case, we have systems that worked OK for us but like to explore if better one existed. You can stick to your way of selling as it is your business.
You can have another thread to promote v-o-x, you have enough members here in this discussion that if you plan to have a group webinar, you can contact us.
As in Sar Bossier case, we have systems that worked OK for us but like to explore if better one existed. You can stick to your way of selling as it is your business.
Kevin-shopVOX
New Member
Will do.
The main advantage to cloud SaaS or PaaS systems was already brought up, you're putting the responsibility and integrity into the hands of specialized professionals instead of having yet one more thing to manage (usually poorly) as a business owner. Either that or you have to be willing to shell out multiple six figure salaries to get the same level of expertise (or the equiv. at contract hourly prices as needed for a good IT merc). I guess as someone who's friend circle is made up of engineers at Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and many other tech giants and startups the idea of small business owners thinking they're better off managing their own software and data security seems absurd. The ~7 years I spent doing contract IT, mostly data recovery for small businesses, bears that out as well. It's very similar to the importance of having a good CPA--it's a lot more effective to trust professionals specialized in a field than it is to spend all that effort learning a field which is unrelated to your business focus and highly distracting from your core purposes.
The other major advantage is that it gets you off the upgrade treadmill as upgrade costs, including your time spent, are fractionalized and rolled into the service fee and the responsibility for it is also offloaded. That's not insignificant as anyone knows upgrading critical software can be a p.i.a. and not unfrequently ends up in a downtime situation. As a lovely side affect most SaaS and PaaS solutions are able to have a much faster iterative development cycle which is very beneficial. I really, really hate waiting for patch fixes. I consider the responsive nature of a good SaaS provider to be a bigger advantage than the simple fact that it's a remote system, which as we've hashed out can be replicated.
SaaS also tends to be platform agnostic, which is a big win.
Anyway I think I've beat this thread into the ground. I look forward to the SignVOX demo, my boss has a lot of the concerns I hear in here as well so it should be interesting. I'd also love to see a page detailing the security practices of SignVOX on the webpage, something akin to mint.com's statement or carbonite.com's statement. General practices, a bit of technical information on the standards in use. Full white paper available as a link would be great as well.
The other major advantage is that it gets you off the upgrade treadmill as upgrade costs, including your time spent, are fractionalized and rolled into the service fee and the responsibility for it is also offloaded. That's not insignificant as anyone knows upgrading critical software can be a p.i.a. and not unfrequently ends up in a downtime situation. As a lovely side affect most SaaS and PaaS solutions are able to have a much faster iterative development cycle which is very beneficial. I really, really hate waiting for patch fixes. I consider the responsive nature of a good SaaS provider to be a bigger advantage than the simple fact that it's a remote system, which as we've hashed out can be replicated.
SaaS also tends to be platform agnostic, which is a big win.
Anyway I think I've beat this thread into the ground. I look forward to the SignVOX demo, my boss has a lot of the concerns I hear in here as well so it should be interesting. I'd also love to see a page detailing the security practices of SignVOX on the webpage, something akin to mint.com's statement or carbonite.com's statement. General practices, a bit of technical information on the standards in use. Full white paper available as a link would be great as well.
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CES020
New Member
Jesse, I still don't get it. We're not employing 50 people making signs here. We don't have a retail store making decals at Disneyland. You're talking to the "IT" person now. I don't know what you're talking about with all these "IT" costs. We've hired an IT person......zero times in the last 5 years. So we have no "IT" costs to recover.
Backing up takes minutes, not hours.
I'm still waiting for anyone to tell me what I can do with cloud based software that I can't already do.
We don't have racks of servers chugging out data all day. I suspect neither do 98% of the people reading this forum.
I'm all for it if it'll do something that helps do something I can't already do.
One thing I do not like about many of these cloud based services is that they seem to all be tied into sign companies. So they are all asking me to put all my customer and pricing information onto a server that another sign company administers. Are you telling me it's not possible for someone to do a sql query and pull some of the most valuable marketing data every from 500 other sign companies? You'd have regional, national, and international information. You'd know more about the sign business than just about anyone on the planet, as far as what's working and where it's working.
I've not seen any legal disclosures on the data you put on the cloud, but if they use the same one google does, then they have the right to analyze all data you're putting on their servers.
I'd type more, but the black helicopters are circling the building and I need to slip out the back......
Backing up takes minutes, not hours.
I'm still waiting for anyone to tell me what I can do with cloud based software that I can't already do.
We don't have racks of servers chugging out data all day. I suspect neither do 98% of the people reading this forum.
I'm all for it if it'll do something that helps do something I can't already do.
One thing I do not like about many of these cloud based services is that they seem to all be tied into sign companies. So they are all asking me to put all my customer and pricing information onto a server that another sign company administers. Are you telling me it's not possible for someone to do a sql query and pull some of the most valuable marketing data every from 500 other sign companies? You'd have regional, national, and international information. You'd know more about the sign business than just about anyone on the planet, as far as what's working and where it's working.
I've not seen any legal disclosures on the data you put on the cloud, but if they use the same one google does, then they have the right to analyze all data you're putting on their servers.
I'd type more, but the black helicopters are circling the building and I need to slip out the back......
Techman
New Member
ya, some said the same thing when I was making my anti Vista rants when Vista was still in BETA. I will not jump onto some bandwagon just because the marketers says its the greatest.
The best place to store recipes is still a recipe box.
It will remain my opinion that very few in on this board will ever benefit from a "cloud". There are very few here that use a dedicated server for email using exchange server. There are very few here using a dedicated server for backups systems either.
The best use of a "cloud" has not been invented yet. And finally,, What is called now called "cloud" has been in use since around 1985(?). All of that is free except now under a "cloud" there is a charge.
David Wright
New Member
Well said Tech.
David Wright
New Member
Jesse called it over so that's it.
Kevin-shopVOX
New Member
We are not a sign company just a software designed to help you manage your sign business. That's it. No conspiracy theory or data selling going on.
Sure you can do everything the cloud can locally or create your own server and manage your own FTP backup. However not everyone is as savvy as you to implement all of what you use and need. When companies look to save money on labor, hardware and software to implement greater efficiency and security then they are looking to SaaS systems and other internet based applications to do so. Its a service that in someone's mind is worth paying for.
choucove
New Member
It is probably the medium to larger businesses that will benefit right away from SaaS more than the smaller businesses may at first.
Think of it this way: If a large business wanted to set up their own cloud to run let's say a job management and invoicing software accessible to their offices scattered all around the united states, then they need to have a data center (even if it's not something massive) with several servers for storing the information, running the front end application like a website within a web browser, etc. and a tech or IT staff that can oversee it. When you've got a thousand or more employees, you have the capital to cover this fine, but it's quite a pricey endeavor. If the company spends $100,000 setting up their own cloud, that's basically $100 per employee to set up that service, and then they have to have regular technicians who can act as tech support for managing their employees' issues with that service which means a lot of money.
Now, look at a company with five employees, and they're paying a monthly rate to use the same kind of functions from a SaaS provider already established. They don't have to create all the hardware and software from scratch themselves, but they have to pay lets say $100 per month for use of that system, which is $20 per employee per month. That means you're paying $1,200 a year for as long as you use that software, where some other non-cloud based solutions may only cost you $200 per computer and you pay it once and you're done.
Jump again to the business with a thousand employees. If they're using a SaaS or cloud application to do this task, they may have to pay more per month than the little guy, but when figured per employee it's not near as high of a rate. Let's say they have a thousand employees, but their monthly cost may still only be $1,000 per month, which works out to a simple $1 per employee per month which is MUCH less than the per employee monthly expense of a small office. This is especially important for a large business as they don't have to spend the large costs associated with setting up their own cloud and don't have to create their own software front-end for it and service it.
I'm not saying that cloud computing is definitely the answer for everything, but when you look at the intended business model, it does make sense in making money. Is it for everyone? Definitely not now. Does it have issues that still need addressed? Sure, everything in technology does, but it one of the many solutions out there to help save money, and also helps to migrate technical support outside of your own company into the hands of the specialized techs trained with that system.
We just recently started trying out SignTracker (and I'm even using it for my own computer business) and I'm very pleased with it. One of the best things about it, though, from my view point is I don't have to be an expert at the software, and if there's questions, it's directed to Joe and his team with SignTracker who know the system best. I don't have to keep track of networking all the systems together, I don't have to keep track of building the front-end and programming everything, I don't have to keep track of backing data up. I just give the crew the tools and show them a bit on how it works.
Think of it this way: If a large business wanted to set up their own cloud to run let's say a job management and invoicing software accessible to their offices scattered all around the united states, then they need to have a data center (even if it's not something massive) with several servers for storing the information, running the front end application like a website within a web browser, etc. and a tech or IT staff that can oversee it. When you've got a thousand or more employees, you have the capital to cover this fine, but it's quite a pricey endeavor. If the company spends $100,000 setting up their own cloud, that's basically $100 per employee to set up that service, and then they have to have regular technicians who can act as tech support for managing their employees' issues with that service which means a lot of money.
Now, look at a company with five employees, and they're paying a monthly rate to use the same kind of functions from a SaaS provider already established. They don't have to create all the hardware and software from scratch themselves, but they have to pay lets say $100 per month for use of that system, which is $20 per employee per month. That means you're paying $1,200 a year for as long as you use that software, where some other non-cloud based solutions may only cost you $200 per computer and you pay it once and you're done.
Jump again to the business with a thousand employees. If they're using a SaaS or cloud application to do this task, they may have to pay more per month than the little guy, but when figured per employee it's not near as high of a rate. Let's say they have a thousand employees, but their monthly cost may still only be $1,000 per month, which works out to a simple $1 per employee per month which is MUCH less than the per employee monthly expense of a small office. This is especially important for a large business as they don't have to spend the large costs associated with setting up their own cloud and don't have to create their own software front-end for it and service it.
I'm not saying that cloud computing is definitely the answer for everything, but when you look at the intended business model, it does make sense in making money. Is it for everyone? Definitely not now. Does it have issues that still need addressed? Sure, everything in technology does, but it one of the many solutions out there to help save money, and also helps to migrate technical support outside of your own company into the hands of the specialized techs trained with that system.
We just recently started trying out SignTracker (and I'm even using it for my own computer business) and I'm very pleased with it. One of the best things about it, though, from my view point is I don't have to be an expert at the software, and if there's questions, it's directed to Joe and his team with SignTracker who know the system best. I don't have to keep track of networking all the systems together, I don't have to keep track of building the front-end and programming everything, I don't have to keep track of backing data up. I just give the crew the tools and show them a bit on how it works.
Kentucky Wraps
Kentucky Wraps
And what if the offsite server where this supposed cloud is hosted has the very same type of disaster? What if the network goes down for days or weeks. None of that matters if it's all done on a local network. You can still bill a customer then. Had it happen when we used everything on site. Also been screwed when I went to use an online billing manager and their site was "under maintenance" and now recently learned that billing manager is going to discontinued alltogether and I can't transfer my billing history to QB. Now I'm INTERCOURSED!
AllWays Stuck
New Member
Heck, all my life dad said I had my head in the clouds, might as well park some files there too!