The Death of the Office Server

28/10/2011

By Andrew Peddie, Managing Director, First Hosted

Once the lynch-pin of every single office, the every day server is now on the verge of being a mere relic, an eBay listing, a forgotten piece of technology. CIOs and IT managers will no longer have a use for it. This is not because there is anything wrong with it, but because technology is becoming more readily available and easier to use.

This is especially the case with cloud-based business applications, data storage, SaaS and PaaS becoming the norm for many businesses.


Storage stories
For so many years now, the office server has been...

...a central part of the workings of any IT set up. Considered the brain or hub of a company’s network, facilitating back-up and storage of its most vital completed work, the failure of this server has proved catastrophic for many businesses. Overloading, power-outs, overheating and downtime all cause dips in productivity, lost business, problems related to the loss of vital data, and the list just goes on.
The traditional office server also takes up space, an expensive commodity these days, with many businesses diversifying and making allowance for flexible and home working to suit busy lifestyles and constricted budgets.


Up, up and away
The emergence of the cloud was initially greeted with some trepidation by businesses, with many fears about security and reliability surfacing. Understandably businesses wanted to ensure its safety and efficacy before entrusting their precious business data, processes and applications to it.

The concept of relying on an outsourced ‘invisible’ platform for everyday storage and business processes such as CRM, ERP and e-mail took a bit of adjusting to, but is now rapidly becoming a dominant business technology choice.
Software as a service (SaaS) innovators such as Safesforce, NetSuite and Oracle have provided cloud-based ERP, CRM,... continued on page two >

 

 

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