Every business has a few basic requirements that needs to be done, irrespective of its domain of work. From accounting related work like bookkeeping, invoicing, or email, VoIP, or project management, file sharing, data storage or time tracking any business needs these at some point of time. Modern days businesses have started using cloud based solutions to fulfill these requirements.

According to Gartner, the worldwide public cloud services market is projected to grow 18% in 2017 to total $246.8 billion, up from $209.2 billion in 2016.

“While some organizations are still figuring out where cloud actually fits in their overall IT strategy, an effort to cost optimize and bring forth the path to transformation holds strong promise and results for IT outsourcing (ITO) buyers,” said Sid Nag, research director at Gartner. “Organizations are pursuing strategies because of the multidimensional value of cloud services, including values such as agility, scalability, cost benefits, innovation and business growth. While all external-sourcing decisions will not result in a virtually automatic move to the cloud, buyers are looking to the ‘cloud first’ in their decisions, in support of time-to-value impact via speed of implementation.”

Here are some of the reasons why more organizations are shifting to cloud based solutions for their businesses:

1. Increased Productivity

Cloud based solutions eliminates the hassles involved in install and maintaining an on-site hardware solutions. It also eliminates software installation, software patching and other miscellaneous IT management tasks. Giving the staff the a chance to better use their time on more important business tasks.

2. Flexibility

Cloud based solutions are designed with self-service and on demand services. For example, a massive amount of computing resources – more storage, computing power, bandwidth – can be provisioned or given to your organization in just minutes, with just a few clicks of the mouse. In a similar manner, lesser computing resources may be given to your organization upon request.

These provisioning and deprovisioning of computer resources in cloud based solutions collectively gives the “flexibility” – a process in which a cloud system adapts to the workload of your organization by provisioning or deprovisioning computing resources.

3. Secure & Dependable

The best cloud computing services run on a worldwide network secure data centers, which use regularly upgraded, state-of-the-art computing hardware. This ensures continuous delivery of cloud based solutions.

Many cloud providers, including Microsoft Azure, offer as part of their data storage packages geo-replication – referring to the replication of your organization’s data within the same data center or to a second data center. Geo-replication protects your organization’s data and applications in case of hardware failures or other calamitous failures in the primary datacenter.

4. Pricing options

Imagine the racks of servers to be bought, the IT team to manage the on-site datacenter and the 24/7 electricity for power and cooling the equipment. Hence it is not a cost effective option for small and medium-sized businesses to set up and manage one’s on-site datacenter. Cloud based solutions lessens the overall IT cost by removing the need to install an expensive hardware and software. Since cloud based solutions are flexible you are charged as per the plan you choose either per user or the parameter involved.

At GigeE, we help many businesses across Canada by providing them cloud based solutions for:

• Accounting
• Invoicing
• Payroll
• Time Tracking
• Bookkeeping
• VoIP/Telephony
• File Sharing
• Emails
• CRMs
• Data Storage
• Data Security
• Project Management

Call 888-366-4443 for more detailed information on our services.

It’s really important to have reliable and effective office IT support systems. Getting the IT help you need, when you need it will ensure business continuity and significantly boost productivity. We’ll share a few tips to simplify the process of getting the IT help you need at the workplace.

Come up with a FAQ section

FAQ sections are created to help users help themselves. They provide basic information to solve common issues and concerns that users may be experiencing. This section can be updated overtime to ensure it caters to emerging issues. It’s one way to ensure that the office IT support team is not overwhelmed by support tickets that are frequent and have similar resolutions.
Provide different modes of communication

How are you able to access the IT support team in your office? To maintain efficiency, IT support needs to be accessible via email or phone number. In smaller and mid-sized organizations, there can be a go to person who has the capacity and capability to handle the issue. You should be able to explain the exact problem you’re experiencing briefly and get the help you need. The other option is to allow remote sessions with IT staff in order to have access to your computer screen and see what’s really going on.

Have strict time frames for resolving issues

When IT support issues are not resolved on time, you risk experiencing losses in your business. That’s why timing is just as important as how well the issue is resolved. Though most IT support teams will promise to resolve issues within the fastest time possible, the delays can create more harm than good. It’s important to set aside company guidelines on how IT support issues should be resolved including the time frame given.

Always provide feedback

If you have any poor experience with your IT system or any part of the infrastructure, it’s always important to provide feedback to the support team. After all, if they notice a certain system is experiencing failure too often, they may recommend a replacement or update. It is important to have effective and efficient IT systems even before you hire a support team that you can trust to do their level best. Explaining to the support team what went wrong and how you think it could have been avoided can help you to avoid similar issues from occurring in future.

Take steps to boost security

Simple measures like turning on all automatic updates and making sure you check disclosures or license agreements before installing software can go along way in securing your PC at the workplace. Your IT support team will offer you all the help you need to adequately secure your computer. From getting stronger passwords to staying away from illegal or pirated software, your PC needs to be properly secured by making a few changes. At gigE, we always help you make the right changes to enjoy the benefits of a reliable office IT support team and achieve your business goals.