Washington Works Blog

This is a strange time for everyone. For business owners, it’s filled with uncertainty as many of their businesses have had to shut down in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Others were forced into embracing remote operations. For these companies, their cloud platforms are turning out to be major benefits. Today, we’ll explain why.

Cloud solutions are extremely popular among modern businesses, whether they rely on public cloud resources or maintain their own in-house private cloud. Some businesses, however, elect to take the middle ground and use a “hybrid” cloud solution. Let’s take a few moments to determine if your business could benefit from this approach.

Cloud services have proven to be extraordinarily useful for businesses of all types. With an immense amount of options to choose from, businesses can get anything from AI to Windows in the cloud. With so many services available, sometimes businesses will pay for computing resources that they don’t use, cutting into their available operational capital. Today, we take a look at how businesses throw capital away by not keeping a close eye on their cloud-based resources.  

When you look at the cloud service business model, it can be easy to wonder how it is so beneficial to businesses - or really, how it fiscally can be. After all, dollars to donuts, the monthly service charges most likely add up to less than a business would spend for another, comparable service. To understand how the cloud does this, it may help to look at something that often occurs in the office.

There is no denying that the cloud has exploded into the fastest growing business computing method, and for good reason. The cloud has a plethora of options that are designed to meet the needs of the modern business. Today, we examine how your business can leverage the inexhaustible supply of cloud options. 

Cloud solutions have proven their value in many different business applications, a major one being the ability to use a cloud service as a storage solution. By doing so, a business can enjoy a few additional advantages as compared to one that relies on more traditional storage solutions.

Traditional telephone systems used to be necessary to getting work done in the office and communicating with clients, but in today’s business world, with access to plentiful cloud-based options and the world’s resources at your fingertips, you have other potential assets to pull from. By utilizing a Voice over IP phone system, you too can free yourself from the clutches of telephone companies and move your organization in the right direction.

The cloud can bring numerous benefits to a business. Public cloud offerings can reduce technology costs, provide scalability and flexibility to a business’ computing infrastructure, promote collaboration, protect your business from data loss, and much, much more. What it cannot do, however, is guarantee the control some organizations wish to have over their technology infrastructure. Some businesses prioritize that control, while others are bound by industry and government-induced regulations. For those businesses, there is the hybrid cloud.

Consultation is something that can save businesses a considerable amount of time and resources. After all, you can’t expect a business professional to know everything there is to know about everything. Professional services, like those of lawyers, financial consultants, accountants, advisers, and marketing specialists, are required by just about all businesses to at least some extent. Suffice to say that each of these specialists has dedicated software and IT solutions that are needed for success.

In today’s modern business world, you’d be hard-pressed to find an organization that doesn’t utilize the cloud to at least some extent. Let’s take a dive into how businesses use the cloud to be more sustainable and efficient.

Technology plays an integral part in just about all modern businesses in some way, shape or form. Without a place to purchase devices, however, no one can reap the benefits of them. Some businesses are vendors that provide organizations with these devices. In a sense, they act as the middle man between the producer and the consumer, acquiring devices for sale to businesses and users alike. In this way, vendors are critical for every single business.

Businesses spend a lot of time thinking about new technology solutions, but new organizations in particular need all of the tools they can get to be competitive in the competitive marketplace. The cloud is one of those tools that will continue to grow alongside your business provided you take measures to keep it flexible enough to change as needed. We’ll help you understand how the cloud can be great for new businesses, as well as some of the solutions you can take advantage of through it.

Few technological assets are as important in today’s business world as a working telephone solution of some sort. While its form has changed considerably over the years from a traditional handset terminal to a desktop application or mobile device, its functionality remains largely the same. In some ways, it’s even better and more improved, offering unprecedented opportunities for businesses to revamp their entire communications infrastructure.

These days, many businesses turn to hosted solutions to take advantage of services that they haven’t been able to use in the past. Whether it’s because they don’t have the staff to properly look after the services or they don’t have the in-house infrastructure for it, organizations continue to take advantage of hosted solutions to varying degrees. We’ll walk you through your options for whether you should build, rent, or buy your hosted solutions to best fit your business’ needs.

The cloud helps many organizations expand their territories beyond simply the physical workplace. Employees can now access data and applications on any connected device. Your office can benefit considerably from cloud-based resources, with email in particular being a standout solution for the cloud.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a business these days that doesn’t use the cloud in some way or another. Before investing in the right cloud solutions, it’s important that your organization considers several factors. Here are three of the most common ones that your business should consider before investing in and implementing a new cloud service.

A server is a necessary component of any business’ IT infrastructure, as its job is to make sure that information and policies are distributed the way they need to be across a network. Once, servers had to be on-site in order to work, there is now the option to have a cloud-hosted virtualized server. Which of these is right for your needs? Let’s do a quick comparison to find out.

Communication is one of the most important parts of running an organization, and this is especially true for smaller organizations that need to work closely in order to make progress. Today’s collaborative workplace is dependent on people understanding a unified message and working to succeed in that endeavor. To this end, a unified communications strategy can be extremely helpful.

The file cabinet. It may be a staple of the office, but boy can they be a pain in the neck. Every file needs to be printed and collated only to be filed in a dingy file cabinet with the off chance that it will ever be needed again. For businesses that have a lot of paper filed away, a document management system can go a long way toward modernizing your organization, and providing a access-controlled database where you can find any file in seconds.

Many business transactions may be moving away from the telephone, but it is still a must-have for any business. Not everyone is Internet-savvy after all. Nowadays, there are plenty of telephone options out there, but only one carries no upfront hardware costs or a exorbitant fee structure: Hosted VoIP. Today, we will take a look at the benefits of cloud hosted VoIP, and how to get one working for your business today.