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Optimize with a SATA RAID Storage Solution
Range of capacities as low as $1250 per TB. Ideal if you currently rely on servers/disks/JBODs
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The hidden cost is that we upgraded our Internet to 30-by-30 fiber from 50-by-5 cable. It took a long time for the salesman from Time Warner Cable to convince me that 50-by-5 was slower even on the downlink. True, if you're downloading a gigabyte file, it's debatable, but the ramp-up for most usage is far more latent with cable.
This is one of the areas where U.S. policy has really screwed up small business. The cable companies have been successful at lobbying states to make it hard for towns to band together to improve the Internet -- and they say this under the guise of free market. That "free market" they are protecting is cable giants' government-protected duopoly. If you don't live in Kansas or Austin, where Google is giving is selling gigabit connections for under $100, expect to pay through the nose. Yes, 30-by-30 costs $1,500 where we are, take it or leave it.
The system integration opportunity
Our finance department is still doing a number of things by hand that really should be reports or workflow; there's a hole
in the cloud here. We've been schooling some of our developers on Google's scripting capabilities and hope to do some kind
of mashup between Google Apps, Expensify, and Quickbooks -- or their successors. Mainly this would be monthly management reports
and making certain repetitive tasks in Expensify automatic and integrated with Quickbooks for when we bill expenses to clients.
The cost
The total cost for all of the cloudy goodness is $21,000 per year for about 30 people, minus the Internet upgrade. This isn't
easy for me to stomach, until I figure in outages, administration, hardware, and more.
There is also that other thing: I sleep better. There's a lot of fear of the cloud, some of it warranted. Yet, without question, I now know that some drunk can't take out my whole company with his SUV. I'll worry about China or the U.S. government some other time.
This article, "How my company went 100 percent cloud," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Keep up on the latest developments in application development and read more of Andrew Oliver's Strategic Developer blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.