Washington Works Blog

If you’re like most businesses, you almost certainly rely on email on a daily basis. However, if your email is hosted on an in-house server, you are becoming less like many businesses, as they are moving their solutions to the cloud. Here’s why you should follow suit and make the switch yourself.

Smart organizations are always looking for ways to improve how they do business. Digital transformation is a way for businesses to get the most out of their technology by improving workflows and overall efficiency. What does digital transformation look like and how can you implement it in your business?

When you hear us speak the world “cloud,” it’s not the fluffy white forms soaring overhead. The cloud that we refer to are computing systems that are delivered to you through an Internet connection. The popularity and demand for cloud services has led both ordinary consumers and businesses alike to seek them out. Despite this demand, in the United States alone, there are over 500,000 IT jobs available. This suggests that there may be a shortage of workers with the requisite skillset and can provide a unique incentive to join the industry as to take advantage of such massive growth.

Did you know that 43 percent of IT decision makers have plans to increase their cloud investments throughout 2017? This is according to a recent survey which, when combined with the steady rate of cloud adoption seen during the past decade, proves that the cloud is the next phase in the evolutionary development of business computing. While this shows great promise for the future, cloud adoption is not something to dive into blindly.

There are many ways to share a file between two computers. Being familiar with multiple options will certainly come in handy, especially when your preferred method of file sharing isn’t an option (like when you can’t find your flash drive, or maybe you lose Internet connection). For this week’s tip, here are four options to help your business more effectively share files.

Many businesses are searching for ways to go green. Most of the ones that do are trying to cut out their reliance on paper and printing. This is strategic thinking, of course, since the cost of printer toner has skyrocketed over the years. Today the most affordable printer ink on the market still comes in at an astounding $13 per ounce; or, slightly more than Dom Perignon. This is why businesses that are looking to cut costs, as well as embrace environmentally-friendly initiatives, are going paperless.

Every business owner is painfully aware of how much their mission-critical software costs them. Yet, one metric that eludes many managers and CIOs alike is just how much value they’re getting from their software. Thanks to the cloud, assigning value to software and making decisions about enterprise technology accordingly, is easier than ever before!

The cloud lets your business share files easily and efficiently, but regardless of how useful this feature is, you need to make sure that your team understands how and why they’re given access to certain files. Giving the freedom to share files is great, but it can quickly become a hindrance when you have inexperienced users doing the sharing. Be sure to take these three risks into account before handing over the keys to your business’s file sharing.

If your business is still on the fence about implementing a cloud solution, we don’t blame you. Moving to the cloud can be a daunting task, and you don’t want to jump the gun and make such a big decision on a whim. It’s important to understand why businesses move their data to the cloud in the first place, as well as what the different types of cloud solutions are and what they can offer your unique business model.

It can be stressful to select the right technology for your business. To take some of this pressure off of your shoulders, we’d like to make a suggestion--look into Microsoft Office 365. It could be just the solution you need to make several of your responsibilities easier.

Moving to the cloud is not an easy task, and it’s certainly not a process that will be the same for every SMB. Therefore, you need to be open to adaptation as the process wears on. Unplanned-for issues might make it difficult to adhere 100 percent to your plans, so if you can’t adapt to that which you can’t predict, your cloud migration is doomed to failure.

Hosting an in-house IT infrastructure may give you the reassurance that all of your servers and network equipment are being cared for properly, but it’s important to realize that your time is better spent elsewhere, like running your business. If you’re unsure if you’re providing the necessary maintenance and management for your mission-critical hardware solutions, virtualization can present a valuable opportunity.

Every business owner needs to understand the pivotal role that technology plays in their business’s growth. However, many companies just aren’t able to keep up with the latest trends and developments. When this happens, they miss out on important opportunities to grow, and when an organization falls behind the times, they fall out of practice. When they fall out of practice… well, you get the idea.

Cloud computing may be a great asset to your business, but there are still plenty of executives that remain quite reluctant about implementing it. One of the big reasons is that security breaches are often covered with high exposure on the news, and this makes it seem like the cloud isn’t a good way to store sensitive data. Now, however, cloud computing security has reached a high point, and you can bet that the cloud has ways of enhancing IT security for your business, too.

The cloud is a great technology that’s changing the face of the business environment, but like every new innovation, there will always be those who are opposed to the cloud, and they can put your business in a precarious situation. Here are three ways that you can convince your team that cloud computing is the way to go, and that it’s a great way to take advantage of modern technology solutions.