using a cloud site for a small business

empc4000xl

I just got a offer to setup a initial small company. They will be using Google for mail, but they want a small server that we can use for virtual office we plan on using outlook at accountability system for assigning task and managing completion of task. For this we only need 1 server since its only gonna be 15 users, but should we go online to one of the hosting places. My problem with this is that since we will be a low paying customer how good would we get treated. The other solution was to lease a server from Dell or HP and have a business class service from a ISP which looks to be the more expensive route.

kalebksp

I've never used it, but here's a video I saw the other day about Amazon's EC2: YouTube - Amazon EC2 Service, IN DEPTH

tiersten

This isn't a good usage of cloud computing. A small server installed locally would be much better for what you want to do. Their internet connection would become a major bottleneck and single point of failure if you used a cloud computing service.

empc4000xl

tiersten wrote: »

This isn't a good usage of cloud computing. A small server installed locally would be much better for what you want to do. Their internet connection would become a major bottleneck and single point of failure if you used a cloud computing service.

The amazon site is saying it has some good bandwith, and I would have to upgrade to customer class service coming from my apt. I'm located in MPLS, the company is located in Philly. Since I would be doing the IT part the server would be located in my apartment. I was hoping that if we rented one online all of the users would be able to RDP to it for there needs but we are shooting to have this ran as much online as possible. I'm looking at google docs and gmail to see how well they intergrate. I'm trying to see if we even need to have our own server at all.

tiersten

empc4000xl wrote: »

The amazon site is saying it has some good bandwith, and I would have to upgrade to customer class service coming from my apt. I'm located in MPLS, the company is located in Philly. Since I would be doing the IT part the server would be located in my apartment. I was hoping that if we rented one online all of the users would be able to RDP to it for there needs but we are shooting to have this ran as much online as possible. I'm looking at google docs and gmail to see how well they intergrate. I'm trying to see if we even need to have our own server at all.

I meant the office connection and not the cloud computing service. 15 people running RDP over DSL/cable would not be a fun experience. If they upgrade to a leased line then they're going to be forking out way more per month than the server would actually cost.

What happens if they want to share files? Transferring it to and from your apartment or cloud computing service is going to be inefficient not to mention slow.

Using Gmail for email and Outlook just for the calendar/todo list is a bit strange...

empc4000xl

tiersten wrote: »

I meant the office connection and not the cloud computing service. 15 people running RDP over DSL/cable would not be a fun experience. If they upgrade to a leased line then they're going to be forking out way more per month than the server would actually cost.

What happens if they want to share files? Transferring it to and from your apartment or cloud computing service is going to be inefficient not to mention slow.

Using Gmail for email and Outlook just for the calendar/todo list is a bit strange...

I hope to be able to not even use outlook. The thing is outlook has tasking which is one of the Must have features, not the nice to have. If we can't find a tasking solution in GMAIL we won't use it at all. outlook has the calendaring and the tasking feature which is needed. We will have people working all over the US possibly. Leased lines are not a option too expensive for even a T1. Im trying to shoot for a way we can have mail sent to users and tasking sent to them with a centralized way to show that people received tasking and for them to update there progress on it. The only product we really need right now is MS office.

tiersten

empc4000xl wrote: »

I hope to be able to not even use outlook. The thing is outlook has tasking which is one of the Must have features, not the nice to have. If we can't find a tasking solution in GMAIL we won't use it at all. outlook has the calendaring and the tasking feature which is needed.

Google Calendar will probably do what you want but it requires a little setup by each user. They would need to create a work calendar and set it to allow their boss or coworkers to create/view events.

empc4000xl wrote: »

We will have people working all over the US possibly. Leased lines are not a option too expensive for even a T1.

A full T1 is only 1.544Mbps both ways. That won't support many people using RDP especially if it is their regular internet connection as well.

empc4000xl wrote: »

Im trying to shoot for a way we can have mail sent to users and tasking sent to them with a centralized way to show that people received tasking and for them to update there progress on it. The only product we really need right now is MS office.

I'd say check out Gmail and Google Calendar to see if that will do what you want. I don't think the idea of running a server remotely will be a good idea for this particular case. You'd be able to do pretty much everything you want just with Gmail and Google Calendar.