Bridging the Small Business IT Gap between On-Prem and Cloud, with Lenovo

From the first mention of “Cloud Computing” in the mid-1990s, there has been a considerable effort by technology vendors and their marketing teams to push organizations to jump head first into cloud computing. Marketing hyperbole aside, there are definite advantages for small businesses in using some as-a-service offerings. Indeed, few companies regardless of size currently host all their applications entirely on-prem or in private data centers.

Conversely, few businesses have pushed their entire IT needs to AWS, Google Cloud Platform, or Azure. In reality, rather than a 100% cloud computing paradigm, 99% of companies are “running hybrid” – a mix of on-premise and multi-cloud deployments.

There are significant reasons why retaining on-premise capabilities makes sound business sense for small to medium-sized businesses. As organizations acquire more data there’s the simple issue of cost. Storing terabytes of data to a cloud isn’t cheap (especially when it comes to getting that data out of a cloud).

Additionally, most organizations are rightly concerned about data confidentiality and security. Cloud providers’ security systems protect infrastructure, not content, so companies must look at WAF, SASE, VPNs, and a host of other often-expensive methods to keep sensitive information safe.

To maintain complete control of the critical information that’s the lifeblood of the small-to-medium business, using local storage and computing continues to make business and operational sense. However, it’s worth noting that on-premise infrastructure is not the poorer cousin to that found in today’s state of the art data centers.

What’s often not fully appreciated is that there’s no difference between the equipment used in “cloud architecture” in giant server farms, and that of what’s available right now for the Small-to-medium business sector. In fact, many of the solutions we’ve featured on these pages come with big value-adds for the smaller business, often in the form of price breaks, outstanding service and maintenance packages.

Companies like Lenovo know that SMBs/SMEs don’t have dedicated in-house personnel to maintain and oversee hardware and software systems, nor do they have on-hand expert advice before procurement. As a global player, Lenovo leverages its economies of scale to offer the small biz sector some of the best values for hybrid solutions on the market today — and that’s in an environment where silicon shortages are driving prices upwards.

When many companies start out, they source hardware and software as best they can (Best Buy and eBay are common!) and then configure on-the-go. Lenovo builds dedicated solutions that come pre-configured for the exact needs of any small business, with needed services (like single sign on and antivirus) pre-installed. That means close to zero configuration is needed, either for a new fleet of laptops or a rack of data storage and servers, and there’s central oversight from the Cloud Management Tool that handles final configuration.

That synergy available between cloud services and Lenovo’s on-premise offerings is representative of the reality of most businesses’ technology today: hybrid IT that uses local systems in conjunction with remote cloud systems.

Many smaller businesses rely on third parties for some level of IT support, but getting this direct from vendors provides gold-plated reliability, especially when the supplier is a global name. For continuous dedicated SMB support the LenovoPRO three tier-level program back the small business sector with price breaks, pre-sales advice, and dedicated aftercare. Those features extend from a half-dozen laptops to on-site mass storage, all the way to cloud integration.

In our next article in this series, we’ll be looking at the DE storage range as a prime example of cost-effective and highly secure infrastructure explicitly designed for the smaller organization. Lenovo’s offerings are scalable so that companies can add processing power, faster networking capability, and more storage as the business requires.

Organizations can therefore choose how they divide on-premise and cloud services based not on cost but business needs– data security, storage costs-per-byte, RTO for data backup and restore, and so on. Don’t forget there’s advice on all this and more from Lenovo at the end of a phone line.

Keep watching these pages for more details on the Lenovo solutions for smaller businesses “running hybrid,” or to learn more in the meantime, click through to speak to an SMB specialist to discuss your options.