cloud based office.

palarsehater

basically run a small plumbing company.

looking to get rid of server move everything to cloud so we can all work remotely from home with no physical office if you like, go over to laptops with mobile broadband on them also would be looking to get the current office numbers on to either a plug in phone for laptop or smart phones.

not that technically minded but a task i've been given to sort out and get a cost for.

does anyone on here have knowledge on this or this is there field and would be looking to qoute for the work?.

thanks

ph

randy andy

bobmunro

You don't need to put everything (or indeed anything) in the Cloud to be able to work remotely.

Just imagine the size of our IT set-up - nothing is in the cloud yet I can access from home (as I am at the moment whilst I recover from my injury) everything I can access in the office with complete security of data as the data sits inside our virtually impenetrable firewall.

Citrix receiver and something like Secure Envoy for access is the way to go. As Randy Andy states, in the cloud it just means your data sits on someone else's computer. I would rather have it sitting on my servers than someone else.

cafcfan

bobmunro said:

You don't need to put everything (or indeed anything) in the Cloud to be able to work remotely.

Just imagine the size of our IT set-up - nothing is in the cloud yet I can access from home (as I am at the moment whilst I recover from my injury) everything I can access in the office with complete security of data as the data sits inside our virtually impenetrable firewall.

Citrix receiver and something like Secure Envoy for access is the way to go. As Randy Andy states, in the cloud it just means your data sits on someone else's computer. I would rather have it sitting on my servers than someone else.

Even if you went "cloud", you'd still need something to back-up on to to be ultra-safe wouldn't you?

LargeAddick

what happens if it's a clear, sunny day? Do you lose all your data?

bobmunro

cafcfan said:

bobmunro said:

You don't need to put everything (or indeed anything) in the Cloud to be able to work remotely.

Just imagine the size of our IT set-up - nothing is in the cloud yet I can access from home (as I am at the moment whilst I recover from my injury) everything I can access in the office with complete security of data as the data sits inside our virtually impenetrable firewall.

Citrix receiver and something like Secure Envoy for access is the way to go. As Randy Andy states, in the cloud it just means your data sits on someone else's computer. I would rather have it sitting on my servers than someone else.

Even if you went "cloud", you'd still need something to back-up on to to be ultra-safe wouldn't you?

The principle is that the cloud service providers provide the back-ups as well!

My concern with the cloud is shared by our owners and the CTO - it's not about access to data, it's about the security of that data.

palarsehater

bobmunro said:

You don't need to put everything (or indeed anything) in the Cloud to be able to work remotely.

Just imagine the size of our IT set-up - nothing is in the cloud yet I can access from home (as I am at the moment whilst I recover from my injury) everything I can access in the office with complete security of data as the data sits inside our virtually impenetrable firewall.

Citrix receiver and something like Secure Envoy for access is the way to go. As Randy Andy states, in the cloud it just means your data sits on someone else's computer. I would rather have it sitting on my servers than someone else.

thanks bob, were a small time company ( under 10 employees ) with a premises in west london were closing down the sales side of the company and just concentrating on reactive callout and installation works, we will no longer need an office that's why i think were looking to go down the cloud route, so that we can all work remotely, issue with having no premises is we literally have no where to store a server.

Rizzo

leftbehind

messaged you PH

bobmunro

palarsehater said:

bobmunro said:

You don't need to put everything (or indeed anything) in the Cloud to be able to work remotely.

Just imagine the size of our IT set-up - nothing is in the cloud yet I can access from home (as I am at the moment whilst I recover from my injury) everything I can access in the office with complete security of data as the data sits inside our virtually impenetrable firewall.

Citrix receiver and something like Secure Envoy for access is the way to go. As Randy Andy states, in the cloud it just means your data sits on someone else's computer. I would rather have it sitting on my servers than someone else.

thanks bob, were a small time company ( under 10 employees ) with a premises in west london were closing down the sales side of the company and just concentrating on reactive callout and installation works, we will no longer need an office that's why i think were looking to go down the cloud route, so that we can all work remotely, issue with having no premises is we literally have no where to store a server.

For an operation that size you could store the server in someones garage or spare room - it would only be the size of a normal tower. The software to share that data securely and accessed remotely isn't that expensive and you would save on the cloud storage you would need to pay for on an ongoing basis. Might be worth looking at.

Super_Eddie_Youds

You can rent server space can't you? That way someone else, hopefully an expert is maintaining it and keeping it safe...this will probably help with GDPR compliance too with customer data.

We use GMA in Penge to do all our IT, we have an office, but no server here - just a switch. They are really good, but i'm not sure how the cost stacks up as i never signed up to it. Helps they are local, as it keeps the costs down, i think their server room is in Brighton even, so all this is possible, i'm just not sure cloud based is the right term.

That said, if you are still keeping a premises - albeit small, you c an have your IT there and people can access remotely. I have an encrypted laptop accessed by a token, then a VPN access on the desktop - works well.

palarsehater

thanks all gives me some things to look at and possible solutions.

AllHailTheHen

I have a cloud based office. It's heavenly

LuckyReds

I'd go for the cloud every time, no question about it. For most small businesses it just makes sense, and - to be entirely honest - I'd be weary of suggestions against it. It's quicker to get started with, is cheaper financially, and has the benefit of preventing you from messing too much up yourself. Considering the company size is less than 10 people, you will probably end up with very small pricing plans too.

The only aspects I would be careful of are "vendor lock-in"; what happens if you want to change software, or the company goes bust? This obviously depends on what business functions are currently provided by your on-premise equipment, and what you're looking to migrate across.

Bobmunro is right though; if you do go on-premise, then it's likely everything that you will want could be served from a desktop located somewhere discreet, backed up to an NAS. (Throw in a few extra hard drives for redundancy.)

As for security concerns - look at it this way: what do you trust more, infrastructure maintained by the companies who know their own products intimately, or infrastructure maintained by either yourself or a third party middle-man? I'd go for those who know the product everytime.

Security is difficult to get right, but at least if you're cloud based then you can rest assured that it's the vendors problem, and that they'll undoubtedly have on call engineers and performance/error alerting should anything go wrong. Not to mention most cloud/SaaS companies are going to be ISO27001 certified, have decent controls on personal data, redundancy infrastructure, in addition to strict back-up procedures.

Alternatively, if you want to keep the server and it's purely an issue of no longer having somewhere to house it - and I can understand that (from an insurance point of view, keeping it an individuals property may not be the best idea.), then you may be able to find a company who will do a "co-location" deal for you.

Chizz

bobmunro said:

palarsehater said:

bobmunro said:

You don't need to put everything (or indeed anything) in the Cloud to be able to work remotely.

Just imagine the size of our IT set-up - nothing is in the cloud yet I can access from home (as I am at the moment whilst I recover from my injury) everything I can access in the office with complete security of data as the data sits inside our virtually impenetrable firewall.

Citrix receiver and something like Secure Envoy for access is the way to go. As Randy Andy states, in the cloud it just means your data sits on someone else's computer. I would rather have it sitting on my servers than someone else.

thanks bob, were a small time company ( under 10 employees ) with a premises in west london were closing down the sales side of the company and just concentrating on reactive callout and installation works, we will no longer need an office that's why i think were looking to go down the cloud route, so that we can all work remotely, issue with having no premises is we literally have no where to store a server.

For an operation that size you could store the server in someones garage or spare room - it would only be the size of a normal tower. The software to share that data securely and accessed remotely isn't that expensive and you would save on the cloud storage you would need to pay for on an ongoing basis. Might be worth looking at.