Replace SBS with Cloud? For or Against?

[seedubya]

Hi

One of my clients just came back from his quarterly trip to the Harvard Business School and so now I'm looking for any and all suggestions for a small company (15 users) to get rid of SBS (inc. Exchange) and replace with an entirely cloud based solution!

I'm also looking for the counter arguments.

I have no particular idealogical viewpoint. However my skills are based on small business networks and SBS in particular.

They need email (large attachment sizes and large inboxes), file storage, file backup, file sharing, possibly versioning. They have large amount of data with large file sizes (engineering dwg files) Other collaborative tools would be interesting. The are becoming more and more mobile every day. They have iPhones but are looking at Android. They have a main office with 4ish people there all the time, and the rest come and go - all over the world including China and Africa.

They're currently running SBS2003 on a two year old server which is very stable.

The owner has expressed an interest in Google Apps, Dropbox and Android.

Thoughts?

 

[14049752]

I use all three, though not for files as large as they would use. It works extremely well. Android and Google apps, especially. My only complaint about google docs is that I always have a hard time with setting up sharing a file on my domain. I know how to do it, but it seems like too many clicks. I'm assuming that they'd use dropbox for most of their files, so that might not be an issue.

I've also converted several companies to a similar set up. One in particular has people all over the country and Google Apps has been an absolute wonder for them. I'm working on getting a few of them on Android phones as well, but it took a while to convince them to trust me on google apps...so...

 

[MobileTechie]

I'm not sure I see the point. With SBS they get all the things you say they need. Why bother changing?

 

[iisjman07]

If the engineering files are very large, won't upload speeds reduce peoples workload? Just a thought

 

[seedubya]

I'm not sure I see the point. With SBS they get all the things you say they need. Why bother changing?

I'm not sure I see the point either. But this guy is an early adopter type and likes to have all the arguments presented to him, pro and con. Everytime he comes back from Harvard he's had a conversation with someone he admires about something new and shiny (to him). I then get the "Why aren't we doing what X is doing?" phonecall and I have to present the arguments.

In this case, my only real business-class cloud experience is with Google for email - which is pretty cool - but it isn't Exchange. Consequently I'm not sure HOW I should argue! I deal with small, small businesses because that's all there are in my area (quite rural) this guy is one of my bigger customers. NONE of my customers are using the Cloud for basic services like email or files although some DO use hosted applications for accounts, CRM etc.

Basically, I'm looking for real world ideas or experiences of why these guys should or shouldn't move to the cloud either partially or entirely.

 

[seedubya]

If the engineering files are very large, won't upload speeds reduce peoples workload? Just a thought

Yes, I would have thought so - but if their hard drives are big enough they can keep every file on every laptop. We're talking maybe 300 Gb of files once email is out of the equation.

 

[MobileTechie]

Some arguments that spring to mind against these cloud systems are that the are reliant on your internet connection and speeds, you lose direct control of your own data and that google apps are not a patch on office.

 

[wimwauters]

Yes, 'early adopters' (i.e. rabbits in advertorial or event-sponsor headlights) are hard work, but they keep your consulting skills up-to-date

The problem with cloud-rabbits is that they never factor in the cost of redundant and serious bandwidth internet connections (as in 5Mbit uplink or higher).

Someone will have to sit down and figure out how much data they will be synchronising and pumping through their internet connection: remember, they all use laptops these days, so it can't be done overnight either: it has to be done during business hours, competing with security updates for windows and apps, sending & receiving big email attachments, etc...

Also, they never think about archiving/backups/retrieving old or deleted files: they just look at prices for simple synchronisation accounts

I personally think it is sad that people are so eager to give away ownership and the responsibility/liability of looking after their own data. And on top of that they expect their ADSL 512kpbs uplink to cope with synchronising their daily work in the cloud.

Edit: needless to say, so I'll write it out: running a business that relies on Google aps and not keeping a local copy of your data in an open format is utter madness.

 

[MobileTechie]

Too right. A very simple example is Carbonite. It took 2 months to backup my hard drives. And is the data all there and capable of being restored? I'll never be sure.

 

[14049752]

I think one thing to keep in mind is that typically the 'cloud' solution shouldn't be the only place the files are stored. It certainly isn't for me or the client I mentioned. It's there to make collaboration easier. So if person 1 needs a file from person 2, they go "to the cloud!"

The way I have it set up is that my files are on my local storage, being backed up...but they're also being synced to google apps or dropbox. That allows me to get them from anywhere, on any device.

Thinking of it like "Google controls your data" is silly. You shouldn't set it up that way....because you're right. You shouldn't rely on them to retain your data with 100% certainty.

 

[Harold]

The two main things that need to have attention paid to them for cloud solutions is the bandwidth pipe and backup solution.

Bandwidth is a key component of any cloud solution. They need to be prepared to pay for a large internet connection at work and understand if they have a slower speed on the road or at home, that work will be slower.

They also need a solid backup solution like Storagecraft and any data stored in the cloud is also backed up locally.

As long as both of these areas are covered, a cloud solution will work just as well as an on-premise solutions. I would also recommend OwnWebNow for email hosting, they have a good process for backing up email and archive access if the server goes down.

 

[ProTech-MN]

First off, every client's situation or scenario is different - cloud-based solutions may or may not make sense for their specific needs. Also, as has been mentioned repeatedly - bandwidth is critical.

Another consideration would be moving only a few applications into the cloud - such as email & maybe backups....

I'm a big fan hosted Exchange for a variety of reasons and I'm just starting to look into some of the cloud-based file server solutions too.

-Randy

 

[4ycr]

I am not sure about the large files but look at Microsoft's BPoS. They get 25Gb of email storage each (last time I looked).

 

[seedubya]

Guys, thank you all for your replies.

My own thoughts are that my client has a vastly over-inflated idea of what will be achievable for his business by moving to the cloud. He seem to think that he'll be able to access everything from anywhere at any time at ultra high speed. It's my job to help him see that this may not be the case.

Some reasons why...

1. Really good bandwidth is not an option locally - with upload speeds being a particular obstacle.
2. File sizes are too big. Many of the documents they work with are in the 30+ MB range.
3. Hosted Exchange or Google Mail might be an option - with reliability being the deciding factor, I reckon.
4. Online backups may be a good idea for truly mission critical files - however if it comes to a restore nothing but a local copy will cut it for a complete system restore. And we already keep offsite backups.