Cambridge-based consultancy Fluid was asked earlier this year to advise IBM customers on how they could save money on their IT. Understandably, since the company was talking to IBM customers, a lot of the advice was for larger computers than most businesses will ever see. Although a certain generation – call us 40+ – still thinks of the PC as “the IBM PC” ir “IBM-compatible”, actually IBM hasn’t been in that business for a while.
Nonetheless a lot of the hints on offer are pertinent to the smaller trader as well as the larger enterprise, so here they are – with some of my input on how they might affect the small business. Most of it is angled towards cloud computing.
1. Increase flexibility
…by not buying physical computer equipment you don’t need and won’t use. This is an advantage that grows because you won’t need to buy a software license per physical computer either; if you have a temp coming in and therefore need Microsoft Windows and Word for three months there’s no problem with paying for a software license only for that time rather than shelling out for a permanent piece of software that’s going to sit idle afterwards.
2. Be selective
Don’t assume cloud computing or virtualisation is an all-or-nothing bid. You can try bits of it at a time – move one or two applications into the cloud, try having one or two systems which are virtual rather than ‘real’ computers – you can take it at your own pace.
3. Save space and power
This is of course related to point 1, but if you have a flexible system which will allow the use of a single physical computer as a different device at different times then it costs less money to store and power.
4. Reduce maintenance costs
In the same vein, if you have fewer physical computers then they’re going to cost less to maintain and repair. There’s more to this one, though. If your applications and data are in the cloud, hosted by someone else, then when your physical computer breaks down – and they do eventually – then all of those applications and data are still safe. Your service provider will handle all of the backup, antivirus and other security concerns so you can concentrate on your core business rather than running your IT.
5. Add capacity easily
If your hard disk is filling up with standard computing then you need to go and get another installed, or put an external disk onto your computer, or delete some files. If you’re in a cloud-based virtual environment then you can phone your provider and ask for more space – they’ll be able to sell it to you and do all the work in the background with the flick of a few switches. Likewise you’ll be able to upgrade to any new version of Windows or your applications if you need to without going through the pain of fiddling with an upgrade yourself.
6. More security for less cost
If all of your data is held elsewhere and you log onto it then you only need a computer with a web browser to function. This means – to put it subtly – an old cheap one will probably do the job. So staff can have cheaper systems which are less costly if they’re lost or damaged. A related advantage is that if a laptop is stolen then it hasn’t got any of your data on it, so your customer details can’t go walkabout.
7. Mobility
As long as you have the right mobile data contract your workforce will be able to use their computers as if they were at their desks all the time because their information and applications are accessible through the Internet. Clients won’t know – or care – whether they’re at home, on the road, or in the office, they will be able to operate equally efficiently wherever they are.
8. Save energy as you grow
As a business grows it may become desirable to have your own servers but still use them to virtualise a system – so you might have three servers acting as seven, for example. Depending on the type they can share cooling and other vital functions so you’ll still gain benefits.
9. Reduce travel expenses
Cloud computing means all of your applications can be delivered to you wherever you are, so home workers will be able to use professional grade video conferencing as well as the office based personnel. Video is also available on many smartphone handsets such as the iPhone 4 and many Google Android models.
10. Better analysis of business needs
Watching when you need computing power (and cloud computing will lead you to know exactly when you’re using a system and when you’re not, your service provider will be able to tell you when your requirement’s peaking) will tell you a lot about how your business actually functions. Is there something you can do with this information to make you more efficient?
Most of this is of course designed to push the idea of virtualisation – which is where people have their PCs not in physical form but in software on a server somewhere, so they can log into it wherever they need to. Servers themselves can be virtualised so if you don’t need a particular server for a while you can delete it, then fire it up again whenever you want to (this is how people like Comic Relief, whose need for transactions peaks dramatically for a week to ten days per year, get by without buying loads of computers that sit idle for the rest of the time – the servers are at their service provider and the computing power is used for other clients when it’s not needed).
There are things you can do with virtualisation, though, even on a single-computer scale. I write about technology for a living. There are times when I need to look at software on an Apple computer and others when I need to be on a PC, and sometimes I have to work on Windows, others on the Linux operating system. Thanks to a program called Parallels I can have all three on the same computer – it’s on my Apple Mac and fires up a virtual PC whenever I need it.
Other people’s needs will differ. But reducing the physical amount of computers you use without hitting your productivity is likely to save money.
Guy Clapperton
