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Cloud solutions are incredibly valuable today because they enable small businesses with limited infrastructure and staff to access affordable tools that help them do business and grow. If you’re a small business owner considering a transition to the cloud and/or how cloud solutions for small businesses could benefit yours, it’s useful to begin with an understanding of what the cloud is. If you’re a managed service provider looking to deliver cloud solutions for small businesses, it’s important to know where you can add the most value.businesscloudsolutions Let’s start at the beginning with a little computing and cloud insight. Then we can consider which cloud solutions for small businesses are popular, and the role an IT managed service provider (MSP) can play to manage additional cloud solutions for small businesses. Cloud computing If you look back in time to computing before the internet, businesses relied on hardware and software to run business applications. It was complex and expensive, requiring entire departments to manage everything from installation and configuration to running and securing the applications. Updates and testing were additional headaches. Companies of all sizes struggled to build and maintain baseline applications, let alone leverage new ones, and small businesses struggled altogether. Fast forward to today: Cloud computing means you don’t have to store your own data. Data is stored and accessible over a network. The cloud itself is a highly secure physical location – a data center – located off-site from your premises, which is home to countless, networked servers. By leveraging the support of a vendor, you can outsource these hardware and software resources – all you need is an internet connection to access and use key tools. Users simply open their favorite web browser, login to the desired app, customize it (if needed), and get to work. Cloud solutions for small businesses are different than for individuals or larger companies Cloud computing naturally has different implications for small businesses than for individuals or larger companies. That’s because the needs for the target-user vary – from the actual infrastructure required to the cloud solutions needed. As a result, there are three primary cloud computing options available to accommodate different needs: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS). If you think of cloud service models like a pyramid, IaaS sits at the base because it enables critical infrastructure. PaaS is the next or middle tier, allowing developers to build applications based on the infrastructure that's available. SaaS rests at the top, ultimately delivering software to end-users. SaaS solutions can be thought of as solutions-in-a-box. Cloud solutions for small businesses typically are SaaS solutions.