WHY MOVE YOUR ENTIRE DESKTOP TO THE CLOUD

by Morris Tabush, Founder & President, Tabush Group

We often have discussions with our clients about the cloud. As technology continues to progress, moving to the cloud has changed from a matter of “if” to “when.” Cloud makes more and more sense each day.

One of the most common applications that clients ask us about moving to the cloud is Intuit’s QuickBooks®, a very popular accounting program for small businesses. As companies are operating beyond the physical walls of their office, they find a strong need to provide remote access to their QuickBooks data, either to outside accountants or to employees. While Intuit does have a web-based product called QuickBooks Online, most businesses and CPAs prefer to stick with the desktop version for the functionality, interface, and flexibility it offers.

Moving QuickBooks Pro or Premiere (the desktop versions) to the cloud has been possible for quite some time. Like most cloud services, it offers several advantages, including being able to access it from anywhere, having robust security and backups, and not having to purchase or maintain a QuickBooks server. There are many companies offering this, using backend technologies, such as Terminal Server or Citrix, to deliver the application. Today, however, there is another alternative to consider.

Moving QuickBooks to the cloud also comes with some limitations. Printing is the most common, as the technologies used to deliver cloud applications can present issues connecting to certain printers. Other constraints include integration with other applications and use of plug-ins or customizations.

Typically, when a company only has one or two applications in the cloud (or even worse, applications live in separate clouds), the applications become disconnected from each other. Actions like copy/paste, importing data, using plug-ins or add-ons (there are thousands for QuickBooks), or any type of custom integration becomes more difficult, if not impossible. Why? Because the desktop PC always acted as the amalgamation point of everything (applications, data, security, icons, and more), but all of a sudden not everything lives on that desktop. Rather, they reside in different places.

To provide an example, in order for QuickBooks to export reports to Microsoft® Excel spreadsheets, Excel must live in the same “space” as QuickBooks. Thus, if your QuickBooks lives in a third party’s cloud, you will also need a copy of Excel there, which will be an extra cost and a separate installation from the Excel you have local on your PC. Alternatively, you may use an add-on to connect QuickBooks to another database or application, for payment processing, or for another function that saves man-hours. If your QuickBooks is hosted, the provider must specifically support these add-ons in order for them to work.

A NEW APPROACH

Rather than moving only QuickBooks to the cloud, many companies (ourselves included) moved the entire desktop to the cloud. Literally, the “hard drive” or tower that sits on your desk goes away and lives in the cloud. Everything on that desktop – from programs such as Office, QuickBooks, Evernote®, and Skype, to the shared drives, to the icons – all move to the cloud as well.

With this approach, everything becomes instantly accessible from anywhere, but still functions like it is all on the same desktop – because it is! You are no longer limited by each cloud provider’s rules and systems, can choose to change or upgrade applications at your own pace, and can run a combination of cloud, desktop, and hybrid applications all in the same environment.

Best of all, once all of your desktops are in the cloud, which means that naturally, your servers are as well, you no longer have to worry about the costs of maintaining your own IT systems. Things like backups, remote access, disaster recovery, business continuity, hardware upgrades and replacement, and local IT support go away. Everything is maintained by the cloud provider and resides in data centers built with more security and redundancy than most businesses would or could do on their own.

When it comes to cost, moving only QuickBooks to the cloud typically costs around $60 per user per month. This is a completely new cost to your firm – it does not eliminate or reduce any of the existing IT costs. Moving desktops to the cloud, on the other hand, while typically more than $60 per month, eliminates the many costs involved with buying, supporting, and maintaining IT.

Several years ago, it may have made sense to move only some data, systems, or programs to the cloud. Today, companies are moving their files, their phones, and even their desktops to the cloud. If you’ve been thinking about moving an application, such as QuickBooks or any Windows-based program, to the cloud, it is worth your time to consider moving your desktops instead. You may be surprised at the results, cost savings, efficiencies, convenience, and problems it eliminates.

And this is why we developed Boxtop – our cloud IT solution for small to midsize businesses.