The Cloud has its uses, and we do leverage The Cloud when it is the right solution for the customer.  But like everything we do, we do what is best for the customer, and The Cloud is NOT always the best for the customer.

Here are some of the biggest misconceptions of “The Cloud”:

  1. “The Cloud never goes down.” Not true.  Like any network, it can and does go down.  When it does go down, your IT company typically can’t do anything about it.  They, and you, are at the mercy of The Cloud provider.
  2. “The Cloud replicates your data to multiple locations so it is always available.” That depends on The Cloud provider and what plan you have selected.
  3. “I am on a Cloud plan that replicates my data so I don’t need to do backups.” Replication is not the same as backups.  Replication also replicates problems.  Even with versioning, recovery is rarely as good as having a fully managed and monitored backup solution.
  4. “My Cloud Provider says they include backups, so I don’t need to worry about it.” What they say and what they do are not always the same.  Also, how do they do backups, and where do they store them? Are they verifying the backups are good, or is it the standard "set it and forget it" backup plan?   If they are stored in the same building as the original data (or even in a different building nearby), then a fire could take out both.

IT Solutions leverages the cloud for email as it provides redundancy that is not practical for most businesses.  When companies the size of the University of Iowa and NetGear move their email to The Cloud, that says a lot.  We retired our last in-house email Exchange Server in January of 2020.  Other than an email with a big attachment taking a little longer to go across the hallway, Microsoft 365 email has worked well for all our customers.

The Cloud is also a good solution for the following:

  1. Needing a machine with a lot of CPU and RAM to run something just a few times a month. The Cloud let’s someone create that computer virtually and only pay for it when it is needed.
  2. The Cloud can work well for customers with multiple locations or a lot of people working remotely that needs to access common data.

The Cloud generally does not work well for the following:

  1. Database applications that are run primarily from a single office.
  2. Any time critical data that you will lose access to if your Internet does down.
  3. Large files and files with lots of graphics.

IT Solutions offers both third party Cloud options and we have our own data center where we host solutions for our customers. We locate our customer’s data where it best serves their needs, and we always backup it up with our fully Managed Backup Solution.