We’ll break it down for you up front: cloud email tends to be the most economical, most secure choice for most small- and mid-sized businesses.
Most. It’s a little word and can be sneaky. Or, in this case, critical.
The thing is, lots of businesses move to the cloud with a herd mentality. Everyone’s doing it, so we run to get server maintenance off our plate and find somebody to handle an Office 365 install for us. Brightworks Group does things a little differently. We take the time to learn your business, identify ways that IT can make your life easier and your work more productive, and then we suggest custom solutions geared toward what you’re trying to achieve rather than following the crowd.
Don’t get us wrong, cloud email does make sense. For the most part (there’s that word again), using the cloud for your business email is easier and cheaper than in-house server maintenance, plus it’s usually more secure. And Brightworks Group can do an Office 365 install with the best of them, but we don’t always go that route. Here are a few things we consider when our clients think about moving email to the cloud:
• What’s your workflow like? Brightworks Group is vendor neutral. We maintain partnerships with the best cloud email providers in the industry—not just one—because we like having the flexibility to suggest a provider, platform, and price that fit our customers’ business realities.
• What kind of infrastructure do you already have and how is it working for you? For most small- to medium-sized companies, having servers in-house is not cost effective or very secure. We’ll do a business analysis to uncover what the real costs of server maintenance are in your case to see if cloud email—or a total cloud migration—might be better.
• What does your disaster recovery plan have to say about email? Have you thought about the business impact of losing your email server? Brightworks Group looks at your disaster recovery plan and makes recommendations that make sense for your business.
• What compliance issues do you have to deal with? Some companies have to comply with regulations like HIPAA or Sarbanes-Oxley, which introduce special email retention and encryption requirements. We help you assess how regulatory compliance might impact how—or if—you can use cloud email services.
Considering cloud email? Let Brightworks Group help you make the best decisions for your business.