For a small business, setting up an email server is an expensive proposition. The server will cost thousands for just the hardware alone. The software licensing is even more and the work involved traditionally takes weeks. Amazon has been quietly solving these and other challenges to cloud computing for the small business for some years now and with the explosion of mobile Internet they are gaining a lot of attention. The same server setup, if done on Amazon can take as little as an hour or two, and can cost far less. How this works is key to understanding why it will replace existing paradigm entirely.

What Is the Cloud?

The concept is simple, rather than spending money on expensive computer server hardware, installing it at the office and setting up the user systems companies can just “rent” a server. The rented server resides on the Internet on a secure connection and in a secure location. Back up and maintenance are handled for you by the provider and users can be up and running in a day. Most companies have resisted this seemingly perfect solution out of fear that critical company data will be compromised, or that network bandwidth will be inadequate to serve the users’ access needs. These have been legitimate concerns, but recent growth in the Internet has made bandwidth less costly for business.

As little as a few years ago broadband options were limited to a few dedicated T1 lines that cost several hundred dollars s month. Now, small businesses can contract for 10 times the bandwidth of a T1 line for less than 50 dollars a month. As for security, while there are still concerns and they are legitimate, data warehouse and server farm technology has advanced to the point that this is less of an issue. Guaranteed up-time and back-ups, as well as server fail-over mean that there is little chance that a company’s data will be lost or inaccessible.

One of the last barriers has been that companies have to spend the same money to put a desktop computer on an employee’s desk so why bother with the cloud? This too is fading because of thin client technology and tablet computing. The cloud is starting to make more sense. Amazon has worked hard to establish this reputation and its working. The cloud is simply moving the hardware out of the equation and making IT simpler, easier and less expensive.

Making the Cloud Pay

What can you do with the cloud? You can do everything that you can do without the cloud, and even some things that would have been too difficult to do before the cloud. Setting up a sophisticated web services infrastructure for you clients in the past was a daunting proposition. With Amazon Web Services, you can accomplish the same project in a matter of hours, without expensive software development consulting costs and no hardware costs. The speed and ease alone make these projects far more attractive to small businesses, not to mention the cost savings. Your company may need to incorporate a vast amount of sales data into the new service but the labor involved is a daunting prospect.

Amazon’s virtual labor services handle it on a piece rate, and the server-power needed can be leased for only as long as it’s needed. Even security can be moved to the cloud with front-ends for email and spam protection, proxy servers to secure web activities, and virtual private networking services handled by cloud servers. There is little that cannot be done on the cloud and much that should.

What is changing is that cloud computing is no longer the exclusive province of large businesses and large data storage. Remote backup and restore services are very popular and this is pure cloud. Many companies have proprietary database applications that have always cost to keep up. Moving these applications to a cloud app server means that the mission critical information is available 24 x 7, guaranteed. Remote workers and field personnel have assured access, even if the company’s Internet connection is down. As costs drop and Internet access becomes more ubiquitous the cloud will become the de-facto IT infrastructure for most businesses. Companies like HP and IBM are making small business focused cloud efforts now as well.