Are you curious about what Cloud Computing can do for you?
Online storage and sharing. Real-time collaboration between diverse users. Reduced capital investment costs. These are just some of the reasons many businesses are moving their operations to the cloud. At North Star Inc., your full-service Denver IT support provider, we’re here to help you decide how cloud computing can help you and which cloud service will make you more productive and improve your bottom line.
We can help you on specific projects or be your entire IT department.
Call 303.552.0018 or Email
Do you need help understanding your Cloud-based options?
Microsoft offers choices for all businesses when it comes to cloud computing. From basic productivity tools for mobile devices with Office 365; to free online storage, sharing, and collaboration with Windows SkyDrive; to complete virtual office services with Windows Azure, the choice to employ virtual IT solutions is yours.
Whether you are simply looking to improve the mobile productivity of your people, or are looking to eliminate on-site IT hardware, cloud computing offers a full range of online services to enhance your computing experience. The virtual environment created through cloud services is indistinguishable from your current machine-based system.
Cloud computing has the potential to be the perfect solution for small businesses that are looking to reduce costs, improve performance, and increase the bottom line. By offering services on an as-needed basis, capital investment costs are greatly reduced, while productivity remains unaffected. You pay for only the services you need, rather than for a suite of services you may never use.
What type of Cloud Computing Service is best for you?
At its most basic level, Windows SkyDrive is an online storage service, much like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Apple iCloud. Any file you store on SkyDrive is available, automatically, on any device; including your desktop, your laptop, your tablet, and your phone. The service works with your PC, Mac, Android device, or Smartphone; giving you full-time, real-time access to your files, docs, spreadsheets, images, and video.
View a comparison chart at the end of this article for SkyDrive, Apple iCloud, Google Drive, and Dropbox.
However, SkyDrive offers much more than other cloud-based storage services, including full sharing of documents, spreadsheets, and files, with real-time, online collaboration. In other words, you and your associates may work on the same document at the same time, creating and editing in real-time.
Share any file, anywhere, at any time with friends and coworkers. For the small business that needs to be able to share and collaborate on files and documents to keep ahead of the competition, SkyDrive is the perfect solution. The free version offers access to your shared files through Office Web Apps but, if you are already using the full version of Office, you will have access to full functionality.
For the company with huge data storage needs, full access to Office and Outlook at all times, as well as media, websites, and virtual machines, SkyDrive is not designed to be your cloud-based IT solution. For a highly functional virtual office Enterprise solution, we recommend Windows Azure, instead…see below.
We can help you on specific projects or be your entire IT department.
Call 303.552.0018 or Email
For organizations with needs for greater storage capacity and full flexibility, Windows Azure may be the perfect cloud-based solution. As a pay-for-use service, Azure offers a full range of Virtual Office Services, including: Windows and Linux Virtual Machines, Website Hosting, Cloud Services, SQL Databases and Huge Data Storage (in terabytes), Virtual Networking, Centralized System Management, and much more, all in a highly secure, extremely stable environment. A Free Trial Offer for Windows Azure Services can be found here.
A true Enterprise solution to creating a global data center footprint, Windows Azure can run any operating system in any language, with a 99.95% SLA. With up to 100 terabytes of storage available, business analytics and caching, Hive, Pig, and Hadoop, as well as media creation, storage, and a fully integrated Content Delivery Network (CDN), Azure offers unparalleled virtual services platform.
For any organization looking for Enterprise IT Solutions – without the huge capital investment in hardware and applications, Azure offers a pay-for-use service that allows larger organizations and businesses to budget their IT expenses much more effectively, and on a monthly basis. It is a stable, secure online environment that will reduce capital expenditures and add to the bottom line.
Microsoft now offers Secure Cloud Services for Health Care Organizations – providing full compliance with all HIPAA Standards for secure data storage and reporting.
As a highly functional virtual office Enterprise solution, Azure is designed for large organizations that would like to employ virtualization to reduce capital investments. It is not designed for the small business that is looking for secure online storage, sharing and collaboration services. For small to mid-sized businesses such as these, we recommend Windows SkyDrive, instead…see above.
We can help you on specific projects or be your entire IT department.
Call 303.552.0018 or Email
At North Star Inc., are ready to help you make the move to the cloud today. We can help you examine the choices available to you, and help you to decide which Microsoft Cloud Service will be best for you and your organization.
To discover the best cloud-based option for your business, Get in touch with us today with your IT Service Request, and one of our Denver network support specialists will come to you to discuss your needs and goals, and help you discover just how The Cloud can help you reach them.