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.

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.

These days, I’m not just the founder and president of Tabush Group, but I’m also the co-founder and a board member of Bill4Time, a volunteer for several non-profit organizations, CTO for all the electronics in my household, and tech support for my immediate and extended families.

Most of my work is done on Boxtop, our all-in-one cloud IT solution (yes, we’re our own customer), which I can access from any internet-connected device. When on the go, I very much rely on my iPhone and iPad.

In addition to being able to access everything work-related securely via Boxtop, there are also a few apps that I consider to be lifesavers when it comes to productivity, so I thought I’d share my current favorites. (FYI: these work across all platforms, with the exception of Scanbot).

It’s hard to imagine that just ten years ago, in 2006, the term “cloud computing” hadn’t been invented yet. By definition, cloud means an IT system or application that lives in a remote datacenter and is managed by a third party provider, as opposed to residing on a server in the customer’s location. Companies large and small had all of their IT systems running on servers and software that lived within the company’s walls.

Fast forward just ten years to 2016, and it’s hard to find a business that does not use the cloud for some part of their IT. While it used to be that decision makers had to be convinced why they should trust the cloud for a certain service, today it’s hard to make an argument why certain things should not live in the cloud. Why the complete shift?