Master the Cloud: The 7-Step Guide to Moving Your Small Business to the Cloud

Master the Cloud was written for Small Business Owners (SBOs) who want to take advantage of the transformative power of cloud computing to streamline business operations, attract customers and increase sales. The book explains how SBOs can acquire powerful, secure and cost effective cloud-based IT resources, in the form of services, to meet their current business needs and to help manage future growth. The book presents a systematic, step-by-step approach to help SBOs transition to the cloud, and use cloud services to enhance business success.

SBOs are seeking more effective ways to interact with customers, partners, suppliers and investors, especially if they are geographically dispersed. They want to connect to their businesses via laptops, tablets and smartphones. They want to expand into new markets without significantly expanding IT costs. They want to replace their existing IT with more secure and less expensive services. SBOs also want to ensure ongoing business survival and prosperity.

Before the cloud, SBOs had to buy and maintain expensive IT to run operations. If they needed to expand, they had to buy more IT. If they wanted to relocate, they had to take their IT with them or buy new IT. And if they wanted to partner or merge with other businesses, they had to buy even more IT to integrate their respective environments. Moreover, SBOs had to replace their IT every three to five years because hardware components would invariably wear out, or would no longer have the capacity to run the latest versions of software. So SBOs either struggled along with the old equipment, sold it as surplus, donated it or threw it out.

This book explains how SBOs can get the benefit of IT and avoid the burden by leveraging cloud services. It presents seven key steps to help SBOs transition to the cloud. The book also explains why SBOs must operate in the cloud today, and why the future of SBO success hinges on the cloud.