Moving to the cloud

Moving to the cloud

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We are a small firm 3 of us. With working from home we are only altogether in the office on average 2 days a week. We are looking at whether we should move to a hosted solution in the clouds which would host our emails and software etc. We have had quotes which seem expensive to us at £200 per month (6 individual email accounts within this). Is this expensive and do readers have any recommendations? What are reader’s experiences with the cloud as opposed to using our own server. The latter worries us in terms of security and backup of data.

Thanks very much

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By mbee1
28th Apr 2016 08:18

We moved over between February and March this year and wouldn't go back.  We're a team of 10 of which two are part time.  We calculated how much we had spent on hardware over the last five years and the rate at which we had to replace it as we had three servers (main, telephone and remote working) which, on average, were each replaced every five years.

There won't be huge financial savings in the short term but it takes the hassle out of having to sort stuff yourself and the office is much quieter with not having a huge cabinet full of technology in the corner.  We pay around £500 per month plus there was a one off installation charge of £2000.  Teething problems at first but it's settled down now and all staff have access to the helpdesk number should they need assistance with anything.

We have contractual stuff sorted with effect to backup and security all in the knowledge that we no longer have to think about it.

 

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By Harrison88
28th Apr 2016 09:01

Wow!

£500 a month, £200 a month?? What are you guys ordering to get to those numbers?

Are we talking about document storage only? Hosted desktop software?

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By mbee1
28th Apr 2016 09:07

Ours is a full hosted desktop service and a 3 year contract.  

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Replying to Hugo Fair:
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By Harrison88
28th Apr 2016 09:14

License fee?

mbee1 wrote:

Ours is a full hosted desktop service and a 3 year contract.  

I assume the license fee for the software is included in that price? £500 per month is quite a cost for a virtual desktop.

For a different example, a document management cloud offering should be maximum £10 per person per month (see Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, etc).

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By mabzden
28th Apr 2016 09:46

DIY Package

I've put together more of a DIY package:

- Dropbox + Boxcryptor for file storage (very cheap)

- cloud-based tax and compliance software (Gbooks)

- Microsoft Office365 email

It all works well and I can access it from anywhere. And it costs considerably less than £500 a month.

And using the cloud is cheaper and less stressful than buying, maintaining and backing up your own server.

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By Matt V
28th Apr 2016 13:03

Hosted Desktop UK

We use Hosted Desktop UK for our 25 person practice.  We pay about £900 + VAT a month (includes basic user cost, MS Office and additional storage).

Generally speaking, now that everything has settled down after the switch we are happy with the service and doubt we'd go back to in house servers.  The support guys are all great, respond very quickly and have been able to resolve every issue.  Software updates are all done outside of office hours (which means no downtime during office house) and we don't have to worry about keeping decent backups etc.

General comments:

1.  As users you have no administrator rights, so it is slightly jarring being unable to install anything (even a simply everyday program like Adobe).  But the support team do install these programs quickly on request.

2.  Get a fibre broadband connection.  Also consider backup broadband connections in case your broadband is down for the day.

3.  Make sure they understand your software spec before the switch.  We use CCH who recommend their software is run on its own SQL Server (for optimum performance), but our cloud providers have put everything on the one server at their end.  Initially Hosted Desktop underestimated how much resources we would require.  This caused 4 weeks of server performance headaches before it was resolved (largely due to CCH intervention).

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Nichola Ross Martin
By Nichola Ross Martin
28th Apr 2016 14:07

Suggested cloud based tax info to compliment your practice...

On the server issue:

It is now pretty cheap to run your own server, however as there are so many hosted options around that it is not worth it for most SMEs. The advantage of using someone else's space is that they will have back-up servers, firewalls, anti-virus etc, and also 24 hour support. One issue is location: try and ensure that you are based in the UK if you work in the UK. 

I would suggest that you check out and compare Microsoft 365 and the Google offerings before going to some of the smaller companies as you can then benchmark from there.

Can I suggest us? online tax know-how and support - ideal for smaller firms and actually used by quite a few of the big ones too.

You can check us out at Accountex if you are coming there - stand A554.

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By SimonLever
28th Apr 2016 15:04

Hosted Desktop

We are a 5 person practice who work jointly at home and in a serviced office and have used Hosted Desktop UK for over a year. Current costs ar £48 per month + VAT which includes hosting, MS Office standard, exchange mailboxes, backup, storage and 10 year archiving.

Desktops can be setup and closed quickly and you are only charged for the time once they have been set up.

Compare this to the cost of your own server (we were quoted over £2,000 when we last looked) costs of maintenance, hardware replacement and software licencing and it is a no brainer!

Would hate to consider going back to having this in house again.

Only downside, as mentioned above, is lack of admin rights to upgrade install software.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
29th Apr 2016 00:57

5 years with Hosted Desktop UK

Realised after 5 weeks we'd never go back.

It's a rolling 3 month contract (3 years quoted by Iris hosting put me off) also setup charge was only a couple of hundred at the time.

It's only when you've been without the backups, boxes, cables, IT support company and general grief of running your own IT infrastructure that you realise what hassle it used to be.

Longer term with all apps running online, hosting will, presumably be less attractive, but we are far from that yet.

If security and backup is a worry they enable local backups of all the data, but I don't bother any more.

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Elliott Chandler Picture
By elliottchandler
09th May 2016 23:33

Hi, my company provides a fully managed secure Hosted Solution that is private to each client. It is not a shared environment like many other provides (that's how they keep the cost down). We offer a very personal service with a Client Partnership Manager and we have a great many happy accountants. Why not give us a try? Call our office on 01904 409940 and see how we can help you. Elliott Chandler www.clearwave-es.com

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