Tabush Group's Cloud & Managed IT Blog

Five years ago moving an application or function to the cloud was not always the best option, but when it comes to business technology today, a cloud migration is almost always a foregone conclusion.  Most cloud-available services have made tremendous improvements in features, performance, and security. Connectivity to the cloud (both wired and wireless) is faster, more reliable, and available practically everywhere on the planet (including on airplanes and cruise ships). What’s more, while the cost of cloud options has come down somewhat, non-cloud systems have not changed much in price, often making cloud a better value of the two.

Making the move to the cloud for any business IT-related function is always somewhat of a process, so how do you know when to consider moving any part of your company’s IT to the cloud? Does the old adage “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” apply to IT as well?

When it comes to technology, the past decade has shown a slow death of hardware. In the world of consumer electronics and entertainment, we’ve seen many examples of new technologies pushing older ones to extinction: streaming reduce the demand for DVDs, which was less than a decade old; the iPhone killed the standalone MP3 player, which itself had eradicated the Walkman and Discman; the digital camera replaced film cameras; and PDAs killed the Filofax.

Tabush Group had a successful year!  Take a look at a few highlights from 2017.

Once again, I’m amazed at how quickly the past year flew by. At our annual company holiday party in December, I continued the tradition of presenting the ‘State of the Company’ speech to our team, the theme of which was progress and growth. While 2016 was a year of celebrating great accomplishments, 2017 was exciting in different ways as we faced new challenges, set ambitious goals, and reached new heights.

Yesterday, the FCC unveiled plans to overturn the 2015 net neutrality ruling, meaning that internet service providers would be able to prioritize certain types of internet traffic over others rather than treating all traffic equally. But what does this mean to companies who rely on internet access (which in this day and age, is just about every business)?

To clarify the title of this post, I’m referring not to clouds up in the sky, rather the ones that live here on land, in data centers across the country and around the globe, and store our digital lives, from music and photo collections to critical business information and applications, better known as cloud computing.

We often have discussions with our clients about moving to the cloud. As time moves on and technology continues to progress, moving to the cloud has moved from becoming a question of “if” to a question of “when.” Cloud makes more and more sense each day.

Intuit’s QuickBooks is one of the most common applications we’re asked about moving to the cloud. It’s a very popular accounting program for small businesses, and, as companies are operating beyond the physical walls of their office, they find a strong need to provide remote access to their QuickBooks data, either to outside accountants or bookkeeping services, or to employees. While Intuit does have a web-based product called “QuickBooks Online”, most businesses and CPAs prefer to stick with QuickBooks Desktop for the functionality, interface, and flexibility it offers.

Each week, I engage in discussions around cloud computing. Often I am faced with business owners (many of whom are very successful and experts in their respective fields) who are cloud-averse, meaning they prefer their IT systems to be on premise, living on servers and equipment that they own, rather than “out there” in the cloud. However, once they give me a chance to explain what the cloud is and how it works, they often have a change of heart.

In his 2002 song “Darkness,” Peter Gabriel states “I have my fears / But they do not have me.” Email is the best and worst thing to happen to business in the last 25 years. Best because it’s simple, fast, free, and accessible instantly from just about anywhere on the planet. Alternatively, because it is so simple, fast, and free, it’s also become so overly abused, which is why it’s also the worst (let’s all remember that for hundreds of years before 1996, businesses ran just fine without email).

For too long, email controlled my life – with dozens of folders overflowing with messages, dings and buzzes interrupting just about everything I did, and lengthy threads involving too many recipients and replies. While Outlook was not my employer (as far as I knew, I had never received a paycheck from Microsoft), it was the focus of most of my days in the office, and when I was out of the office, whichever PDA/smartphone I was carrying that year would fill in until the next morning.

My email had me, I did not have email.