By Todd R. Weiss
With a typically tiny IT staff, it's often tough for small businesses to find the time and resources to develop and begin a real cloud computing strategy. And at the same time, having a small IT staff can be a convenient reason you can lean on to keep the cloud at bay for another year.
The trick, though, is to get over that perception – right now. Don't let it be an excuse anymore for your small- or medium-sized company to miss out on the promising capabilities and opportunities that the cloud could bring to your operations and growth in 2012.
So what do you do?
Well, as a small business, you already have to work harder. Talented cloud IT workers aren't just going to come to your door and knock. You're going to have to get out there and make it happen.
That's the advice from Mat Ellis, the CEO of Cloudability, a Portland, Ore.-based company that offers software to help companies of all sizes track, optimize and monitor their cloud spending so they can control their cloud costs efficiently.
Mat Ellis, CEO of Cloudability. Image courtesy of Cloudability.com
"Experienced cloud engineers are strongly in demand right now and it's hard to compete for the best staff," Ellis said in an email reply. "Expect to train existing staff and deal with the resulting delays/dead-ends as your brightest people go through the learning curve of a cloud migration."
That's good advice for a number of reasons.
First, if your existing IT people are making good things happen for your company, then growing their talents and investing in them is a win-win for both of you. Additional skills training can foster their self-esteem and capabilities, as well as encourage them to take on new responsibilities and challenges that can drive them to improved job performance. If your boss believes in you, it can inspire you to perform beyond expectations. Try it. It works.
Meanwhile, by encouraging your brightest people to help move your small business into the cloud, your company will finally be able to leverage the value and promise of the cloud in everything from additional storage to complex new applications to computing on demand as needed. I'd bet money that most small- and medium-sized companies under 150 employees haven't yet truly figured out how the cloud can help them. I'd bet that most of these companies simply don't have the time to care about how it can help them. It's time for this to change.
Don't get me wrong – I still don't view the cloud as a fix for everything. It's not the solution for world peace, global warming or the recent political stalemates on Capitol Hill.
What the cloud can do, though, is help your small business act bigger, look bigger and get bigger by growing your operations through easy-to-access services and capabilities that you can buy as you use them.
No big upfront investments. No huge commitments. No long-term lock-ins. Try things. If they work, try some more things. If they don't, change direction or try out alternatives.
What can the cloud do for your growing company? You won't know until you check it out and you can't check it out if you don't have the people on your IT team to help lead and guide your efforts.
Sure, you can try to woo some expert cloud managers or developers from a larger company to come in and work for you. But perhaps you should start by looking at the faces inside your existing IT department and see who can step up to take your business to the next level.
Growing your cloud operations from within – you can do this.
So, do you still have an excuse or are you ready to try?
Let me know what you decide.
Todd R. Weiss is an award-winning technology journalist and freelance writer who worked as a staff reporter for Computerworld.com from 2000 to 2008. Weiss covers enterprise IT from cloud computing to Hadoop to virtualization, enterprise applications such as ERP, CRM and BI, Linux and open source, and more. He spends his spare time working on a book about an unheralded member of the 1957 Milwaukee Braves and watching classic Humphrey Bogart movies. You should follow him on Twitter here. You can contact him at toddrweiss@gmail.com
