Software from the Web: How the middle class of the cloud benefits – Business Week

Sven Hansel

Small and medium sized businesses now use on a large scale on-demand software from the cloud. Niche suppliers from Germany are increasingly able to benefit from it.

André extinguisher business “beat the fast eat the slow” as he says. His employer, the medium-sized Green Building Group expands each year 200 to 250 energy-efficient prefabricated houses in Germany, continuing, according to Credit Reform last around 21 million euros. “If customer inquiries by e-mail come in, one must no longer be a week’s time, since the answer must come immediately,” says marketing director extinguisher.

For a software system for customer management provides. It includes the sender using the postal codes from the responsible sales manager, so he has the request immediately on the desk. Just as quickly, new employees as users can be integrated, because the software is cloud: That is, it is operated via an Internet browser, requires no installation, but running in data centers, external service providers. For this reason, neither for the software use even more for care and maintenance programming work required.

Pros and Cons of Cloud Computing

• Cost

  If a company does not maintain its customer database in your own data center, but uses an online service such as Salesforce.com, it saves investment in infrastructure. Billing is also usually staggered, for example, according to the number of users or memory usage. Business customers hope to gain significant cost savings.

• Scalability

  “11”

  If you rent space in the network can flexibly respond to the demand and increase the need for simple and fast or sink. For example, if a startup is growing rapidly, it just moves up the capacity. . Thus, low fixed costs incurred

• simplicity

  The installation on their own computers is eliminated. This makes it possible to introduce a new system very quickly. Also the updates be no problem, so the administration expenses down. . However, the cloud services usually can not as individually configure

• location independence

  To use the cloud services employees need is an internet connection -. regardless of their location and the device they use

• Security

  The data service providers advertise that they intensively with the IT security deal than individual users or companies. However, the data centers of cloud providers are also an attractive target for attackers by hackers because of the large amount of data. In addition, is difficult to understand from the outside, whether the provider adequately protects the data from its own employees. Outsourcing thus represents a loss of control.

• dependency

  Many companies depend on their service because they can not switch easily to another provider. This is about the fact that they have to adapt their systems to the complicated interfaces. Also, users often have difficulty if they wish to change their data the provider. Another question: What if the operator of a service goes bust? Only when there are standards, which allow to change from one to another service dependency.

decrease

Software, you can retrieve the rent from the Web, now also comes in small and medium-sized companies are increasingly going. “For the first time there are more supporters and skeptics; the use of cloud computing in business continues to increase, “says the Cloud Monitor Digital Association Bitkom March. Even in smaller businesses with 20 to 99 employees, the proportion is already at 41 percent. On the supply side set in the business with SME customers thanks to the privacy debate alongside American IT giants like Amazon or Microsoft increasingly niche suppliers from Germany by. Because they work under the local data protection.

Better fully encrypted

“The issue today is not whether, but how the middle class cloud computing uses,” says Heiko Henkes, cloud expert when market observers Experton Group of Kassel. Be sought, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises providers that offer the product cloud “worry-free”, ie as complete packages that have integrated the software itself backups up to the Privacy everything.

In addition, companies do not want to bring the full IT, but individual operating units in the cloud. “It starts with the e-mail management to personnel management to the telephone system,” says Henkes. What is needed are ad hoc applications where the cloud using the permanently installed in the enterprise software is superior.

More companies purchase computer performance from the cloud. While brake safety concerns and unclear legal regulations the move. The revelations of Edward Snowden but have done little damage

In order for the SMEs not only want to reduce costs, but work at the same time flexible and -. Such as the prefabricated house specialists Green Building – modernize processes. “Our employees sitting with tablet or laptop while customers at home and can no longer say, ‘Well, I write everything on me now, calculating it by tomorrow at the office and sign up again’ The time now is all done on the spot.” says manager extinguisher.

The company is counting on freelancers, working with our own equipment and a variety of operating systems. Therefore Green Building uses a cloud customer management system from Microsoft. This runs on any browser, regardless of operating system, and does not need to be installed. “Our internal IT resources we have that can not lift,” says extinguisher. “And in terms of safety, we rely on Microsoft’s reputation.”