For some time, Invision Kansas City has been encouraging and helping businesses move to cloud computing. By some estimates, cloud computing will surpass the $270 billion mark by next year, with a lot growth coming from the business market.
And, it’s no wonder. Using experts to manage your AWS cloud environment offers businesses several undeniable advantages, including:
- More efficient service delivery for their customers
- Measurable cost savings from leaving the hardware lifecycle behind (no more buying servers, storage hardware, etc.)
- Cost savings on energy bills
- No disruption to business due to hardware failure
- A built-in disaster recovery plan
- The freedom of mobility for employees
- Sophisticated and effective security
- Scalability
These are all very good perks to using a cloud service. Your business may have switched to a no deposit electricity plan recently, after all, and saving money is always a priority. While providing business tech support services in Kansas City, we’ve not only recommended many of our clients move to the cloud, but also facilitated it and offer cloud computing services, customized to each customer. With nearly 100% up time and industry leading security, Invision’s cloud computing services for business can handle any company’s most demanding IT needs.
The Power of Cloud Computing Runs on Your Network Bandwidth
One question we are asked quite a bit lately in our business IT support role has nothing to do with IT support and everything to do with network bandwidth. Webpages “taking forever” to load, connections being dropped, functionality feeling slowed to a turtle’s pace… these are signs of insufficient bandwidth.
With the cloud now prevalent in businesses, having a smart bandwidth strategy is as important as having an IT strategy.
When helping our IT support clients develop their cloud service solution, one of the next aspects we tackle is their bandwidth strategy because they cannot and do not work in silos. The factors we take into consideration are:
- The quantity and quality of the location’s bandwidth (having Google Fiber in Kansas City can make this a non-issue for businesses that use their service).
- If quantity and quality are lacking, we find the next best option.
- A backup service should the primary network connection go down (weather, construction, outages happen).
- The impact remote employees have on bandwidth and expectations should their connection go down.
At the very least, your policy should be verbally communicated throughout your business. A safer approach is to share a formal written policy should there be any claim of misunderstanding later.
To avoid overburdening your bandwidth, set clear expectations with your employees about what is acceptable and unacceptable use. Despite rules against using social media and such on company time, the fact is that the majority of your employees will be posting and commenting throughout the day anyway.
The Society for Human Resource Management published statistics regarding non-work internet activity that uses bandwidth, not to mention affects productivity… in case you were wondering just what your employees are doing if not working.
- The 30 to 40 percent of employee Internet activity is non-work-related, according to IDC Research.
- Charles Schwab reveals that 72 percent of its customers plan to buy or sell mutual funds over the next six months, and 92 percent of these plan to do so online during work hours.
- 70 percent of all Internet porn traffic occurs during the 9-to-5 workday, according to SexTracker. This means that one in five employees access cybersex at work.
- 28 percent of individuals making gift purchases do so from their offices or cubicles, according to Pew Internet and American Life Project.
All this extracurricular activity means productivity and the bottom line can take a hit. It also opens your network to viruses and malware.
Can Invision Kansas City Secure and Optimize My Business Network?
Of course, we can. Along with customizing cloud-computing services for your business, our team can keep your system current with ongoing maintenance and updates. We can monitor usage of your network and help identify risky and unauthorized behavior.
