Our philosophy “Everything on the ‘Net” appears to many business people as risky.

Why? The first fear is typically “I want to ‘own’ my own data” (translation: I want to see the hardware in my own server area.) Or the other popular objection is, “the Internet isn’t secure.” There are many other ways to push back on the inevitable adoption of the Internet as computing platform.  Name yours.

Fair enough. Those and others are good thoughtful objections on the part of any thinking business person that wants to ensure the longevity and security of their business. This kind of thinking, however, results from a combination of old comfortable habits, fears promulgated by those who benefit from those fears (your IT staff or vendors) and a lack of current and accurate information.

To clarify let’s begin with the comfortable old habits. What are they? Essentially it’s the belief that by physically controlling your server and other network infrastructure you are somehow more secure.  Speaking of secure, the other big Kahuna of “old comfortable habits” is the stereotypical, “the Internet isn’t secure.”

What follows may sound like an over simplification. But it’s not if you think about it and do a little research. Even logically it sounds right, though old comfortable habits ARE hard to break.

Here’s the news… there are data centers, Software as a Service providers, Platform as a Service providers, Internet software providers and a long list of others that provide highly reliable, trustworthy and low cost Internet based solutions to the marketplace right now. And many of you are using them even as you read this article.

Consider on-line banking, Amazon.com, Salesforce.com or Quickbooks online for example. What do all of these solutions have in common? They are secure, used every day, and are or will become essential to doing business.  This is, of course, an example of the proverbial “tip of the iceberg” when considering what resources, applications or solutions are available that are “pay as you go” services.

“Pay as you go” is now know as Software as a Service (SaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS).  A good example of SaaS or PaaS is Salesforce.com.  However there is an entire universe made up of tens of thousands of extremely useful and FREE (read disposable) applications and services available to you whether you use them only once for a single purpose or repeatedly as part of your business process.

Google, Amazon, Coghead, Zoho, Microsoft, Oracle, Intuit (Quickbooks), NetSuite. These are the names of companies offering free and paid for Internet based services to businesses. They are widely adopted and this is no longer a risky proposition.  Companies have entrusted their entire customer databases, all their accounting information and all of their HR information to these companies.

As to the Internet isn’t secure, read what is said above. The banks, credit card companies, mortgage companies, stock traders, on-line shopping vendors, used by millions of people daily ARE secure.

Again though, fair enough. It may, and most likely should, take some more convincing for you to accept the premise of “Everything on the ‘Net”. But, give the idea a chance. Talk with us. We have decades of experience and expertise that combined with the currently available Information Technology solutions WILL help you lower your cost of doing business, help you become more efficient, communicate better with your customers and employees and otherwise vastly improve your ability to use and share your valuable knowledge, services and products.