We are considering to host our entire business software system on cloud instead of having a physical server at the office. It is basically an accounting firm. Our main concerns are reliability, security and accessibility. We will have our professional software including MYOB, Quick books etc. We will also need to install general software. The data center must be in Australia. We have accountants in different cities.
Do you think it is a viable option to go on cloud? What are the reputable providers? Any hosting plan that you would suggest? Any general or technical advice would be most welcome.
Thank you and I appreciate your help.
Definitely possible. Without knowing the details of your "business software system", it seems best to get an idea of what you need then find a local IT provider who can setup disconnect your old server (or reconfigure it as a backup server) and be available for ongoing support.
Amazon have cloud hosting solutions and have a data centre in Sydney.
There are other 'cloud' hosting providers; however, don't be focussed on the buzzwords, you need a solid server with on & off-site backups & quick restore capability. Based on having multiple accountants, it seems every hour of downtime would cost considerable $, so you would need someone able to provide good and fast support if required. There's a lot of reselling, problem being if the underlying provider is hopeless it doesn't matter if your contact can answer the phone 24/7, if they can't fix the problem it's useless.
'Cloud' is simply interlinking computers, despite many hosts saying they have a "cloud that never goes down" there is often only 1 live copy of your files or database and when that goes down you're down. i.e., there are very few "true clouds" in that every potential point of failure has an instant fallback. But "cloud" is about as loosely used as "cool" so it's not exactly something you can compare via.