As a small business a server has a lot of valuable information, often information your business would struggle to run without. Data is the heartbeat of just about every organization today. So you want to make sure you are making the best decisions to keep that data safe.

Today we wanted to talk about servers and data and where the best place for your business is to host all the important information you need. Even if you already have had a long-term server on site, you might benefit from the following information just to ensure you are moving forward in the right direction for the whole of your company.

First let’s cover the pros and cons of each:

In-house, Local Servers

Pros

• You and your IT team have all the control when the server is on your site
• Critical data stays within your four walls with no access from third parties
• You don’t need to rely on connection speed to the internet
• Can be cost effective in the long-term

Cons

• Investment upfront in hardware and resources
• Needs dedicated space and human resources to maintain
• Open to data disaster should your location experience severe weather or emergency that cases an interruption in your power
• Up-time depends on your IT team

Cloud servers

Pros

• No hardware costs
• Ideal for companies who are growing quickly and need to scale up rapidly
• You only pay for the options you want and can add on additional services easily
• Employees are not location restricted; they can access the server from anywhere
• Bring your own Device capability makes hardware costs even lower for employees who would rather use their tech and makes it more likely they will use it
• Data is consistently backed up to the cloud so you minimize data loss in an disaster

Cons

• The speed of the internet determines how fast you can access data
• Third party services might have access to your data
• If the internet goes down, you don’t have access to data
• Can be more costly over time which can be a deterrent if you aren’t concerned with up-time

Each business needs to decide for themselves what fits best for the data, the accessibility and costs. With all the data that businesses are now collecting on their clients, vendors, products, and more, often the cost of downtime is more risky than the chance that third parties may have access to the information. For others, the long-term cost of maintaining a cloud server may not make sense if they don’t store a lot of data or if their business wouldn’t be greatly impacted by downtime when their data is inaccessible.

For many of our clients, the cloud environment is proving to be more efficient and is less risky, especially if you don’t have an expert in-house technical team. Revolutionary Technology Group and our partners can even have your data in three locations — that way if a disaster hits one location, your data is still safe and accessible. Knowing that they are guaranteed up-time and that the risk of data loss dramatically decreases, businesses are more and more widely embracing the cloud to keep them moving at the speed of business.

What is best for you and your business? Contact us and we’ll talk about it with you.