Technology

From Office 365 to AWS: Assessing Your Cloud Needs

If you are considering moving more of your infrastructure towards cloud services, the transition can be difficult. Businesses from all industries are making these same transitions and cloud service providers are creating more and more options for services. While having copious options to choose from is obviously a great thing, the decision making process can give you headaches. What services do we need? What do we use now but can do away with? What new services will we need as we grow? These are all valid concerns and important questions to ask as you make your transition towards the cloud.

Particularly for small businesses with limited resources to spend on IT considerations, these decisions can be difficult. You not only have to consider the services you need, you also have to consider the prices of each. Luckily, software companies have started to consider the needs of small and midsize businesses (SMBs) and begun to develop their applications and services accordingly. This has created a competitive market with companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft all fighting for your business.

Microsoft’s Office 365 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are two of the best options available for SMBs, and they each provide their own unique benefits and services within the service. They are in direct competition with each other, so many of their services are similar and most of their options are competitively priced. Since your business is unique in its market, the needs of your cloud services will be unique as well. However, there are some cloud services that all modern businesses need (email, data storage, etc.), and both AWS and Office have great options for all of these.

AWS (Amazon Web Services)

While you may not think of Amazon as being quite on the level of Google or Microsoft in terms of web services, they have made themselves one of the leaders in cloud services over the last ten years. AWS groups its services into four main categories: compute, storage and content delivery, database and networking. Within these four categories are just about every service your small business could need within the IT realm. It is a secure platform that provides computing power, database storage, content delivery and other functionality that will help your business scale and grow.

Office 365

Similar to the AWS categories of functionality, Microsoft groups its services into categories it calls compute, data management, performance, and networking. Included in this is the Microsoft Office suite of programs, available through a subscription with Office 365. If you are unsure whether or not you need to keep Office 365 in your integration to the cloud, you do. Everyone is familiar with the programs of Office, and this kind of familiarity can go a long way in making the transition easier.

Are you ready to adopt one of these cloud services with your business? We can help. ISOutsource will help you assess your needs and help find the right provider for you.