The Holiday Spirit in the Christmas Cloud

In Charles Dickens' tale, A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge learned an important lesson that most of us already know. In order to get the best out of people, you need to give the best of yourself. For those of you who don't remember the 19th-century novella, Scrooge is a business owner who only cares about money and because of this, draws the disdain of his family and his extremely patient subordinate, Bob Cratchit. On Christmas eve, he's visited by three Christmas spirits, and as he gets a look at the reality of how his actions affect those around him, he wakes up on Christmas morning with a new perspective.

Most business owners understand the value of their employees and many of them will sacrifice more than their time to ensure that the people that depend on their organization are looked after. This kind of generosity can present problems for small businesses that don't have the revenue to offer a lot of fringe benefits to its workers. On way that these small businesses can cut costs while keeping the computing resources they depend on is by utilizing the many options that cloud computing has to offer.

In the modern workplace, it is important to have productivity and collaboration tools to keep your employees on the same page and working together toward your company's goals. At Computerware, we stress to our clients that in order to be the best business you can be, you need to keep your process efficient. Cloud computing provides options to significantly improve efficiency. These include:

• Flexibility: With cloud computing, you only pay for the computing that you need. Whether that be a complete computing infrastructure for your business, productivity software, or simply storage, the cloud provides companies with flexible and scalable options in which to get the computing they require.
• Mobility: With cloud computing, your computing environment, database, or software is available from anywhere there is an Internet connection. This creates scenarios where you can get more done, from more locations, from more devices than previously possible with a standard business computing environment.
• Dynamic solutions: You can find about anything you need in the cloud. Whether you are looking for productivity application, customer relationship management application, file management applications, you name it, you can find it in the cloud. This presents solutions for businesses that cannot, for whatever reason, pay for a stand-alone solution that's hosted in your office's server or on your workstations.
• Affordability: Since you only get the amount of computing that you need, you will be able to save money that can be used in other facets of your business. By not taking on any additional technology-related expenses and receiving fast, reliable solutions from the cloud, you present your company with savings in cost and in value.

Scrooge's major belief that money was the most important element in life is inevitably inherent with many small business owners, but for a much more reasonable justification than simply uninhibited greed. Most have to be mindful of every penny they spend to ensure that their operations don't stall. If you are one of these small business owners or executives that need to cut costs while still maintaining the computing resources. In the cloud there are resources for all of your mission-critical business computing needs, including solutions for:

• Email
• Communications
• CRM and ERP efficiency software
• Productivity software
• Mass data storage
• File sharing
• Infrastructure hosting

This alteration in business computing changes the game for many new start-ups and small businesses. If Scrooge were privy to the operational efficiency many of the newest solutions provide a burgeoning small business, he likely wouldn't have Bob Cratchit working long hours on Christmas eve.

At Computerware, we know we couldn't do it without your clients and partners. We would like to extend a warm, happy, and healthy holidays to you and yours.