We talked with Angus Ogilvie the Director of Generate Accounting who has recently moved to the cloud with Aerorock. This is what he had to say.
What was your IT like before Aerorock?
We ran everything in-house on a server. It was a constant worry. Our IT service provider was located half an hour away, so we had considerable down time when the server stopped working. It didn’t happen frequently, but it happened too often. We were running an old version of Microsoft Small Business Server, which didn’t support mobile devices properly. As a result we couldn’t synchronise email, calendar and contacts between our desktop computers, laptops and smart phones.
What made you realise you needed to change?
Cloud computing was coming of age, and I could see that it solved a big problem for us. When we visited clients on-site we had to print out everything needed for each meeting. We were swimming in a sea of paper. The time required to print and organise all this paper was time I couldn’t recover. All this information were already in our computer system. We needed a way to access this information remotely, so it was at our fingertips wherever we went. I could see that cloud computing was the answer, but I didn’t know how to go about it.
How did you go about finding somebody to help you?
Aerorock rang up. The rest is history.
Why did you pick Aerorock?
The thing that appealed to us about Aerorock is that they’re focused solely on cloud computing for small business. Other vendors wanted to sell us more hardware and software. That’s not what we needed. We’d made the decision to go to the cloud, and we wanted someone who was as committed as we were to using this new technology. The Aerorock team know cloud computing inside out, and their customer support is superb. We’re very pleased we made the switch.
What was the transition like?
The transition was pretty much seamless. On Friday we were on Small Business Server, and the following Monday we were in the cloud on Office 365. The change was transparent. Outlook looked and worked exactly the same way as before. But, our computers and mobile devices were all synchronising perfectly. All the changes were for the better. We also started using SharePoint Online to manage important documents and emails, eliminating the need for expensive document management software. We moved all our shared files onto one of our workstations and began using an online service to back them up automatically. We switched off the server for good. Aerorock made the transition smooth and painless.
What is your IT like now?
IT has gone from one of our top concerns to not even rating a mention. Now that our systems are in the cloud Aerorock takes care of us remotely. When a question or an issue comes up we contact Aerorock and they usually have a resolution within minutes. We don’t need to worry about running up a bill each time we contact them, which is reassuring. We consider Aerorock a trusted adviser dedicated to helping us get the most out of our business technology.
What advice would you give to yourself if you had it all to do over again?
I wish we would have found Aerorock earlier. We would have saved a lot of time and money.
For more information on cloud IT and how it can help you contact us.
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