Is the age of the serverless office here?

If you’ve ever had to wake up at 2am and run to the office because a server has gone down, you’ll understand the appeal of a serverless office.  

Servers can be complicated beasts with lots of need to update and maintain. Often you require offsite expensive disaster recovery systems and downtime can be an issue if your server is incorrectly configured. These hassles are just a few of the reasons why many businesses are embracing a serverless architecture. 

Can your business go serverless?

Yes you can. In fact, we have several sites from recruitment businesses to building contractors, who have no server infrastructure at all.  

All of the business are using true cloud software which is accessible from within the web browser such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.  

Some businesses such as those operating within the recruitment industry really lend themselves well to the serverless office and cloud computing, as many of the tools they use are already cloud based.  

One of the main reasons to still have an on-premise server of some sort is for complex printing or if you have software that doesn’t lend itself well to the cloud, such as Computer Aided Design (although there are also cloud-based CAD services available). 

It’s all about the business benefit

We have recently completed a project for one of our clients, migrating them to the Microsoft Office 365 suite of products.  

Our client’s requirement:

They work out of 17 sites in the UK, with 120 employees and have no server infrastructure in any site. 

What we did:

We designed a cloud-only IT strategy as our client did not want to invest in any hardware that could mean downtime for the other sites should that server fail. 

The majority of their business now runs off Office 365 and other true cloud based industry specific software packages. Minimising downtime and providing the business with a stable, scalable platform for growth. 

There were other issues to contend with. As they expanded their business they required very niche software that required a licensing server. The software was to be used at all depots but only by two people at a time.  

The software was very expensive and to have it licensed on all the PCs would not have been cost effective. 

The solution was to provide a Microsoft Azure Cloud based server with a single sign on linked to the Azure Active Directory Domain Services service. The users would open a secure connection to the licensing server to be provided with a license for the software and, when they had finished, close the software and the license would be relinquished therefore allowing another user to log on.  

Cost:

The solution cost less than the price of one license for the software per annum. The cost of Office 365 subscriptions with online file servers are good value even if not all services provided are used. 

Saving money is just one of the benefits of a serverless environment. When configured correctly, being serverless can give you and your business a great deal of flexibility and added security.  

If you would like an assessment to discover if having a serverless environment would benefit your business, please get in touch with our team on 01332 374444 or by e-mailing hello@infusetech.co.uk. Also, you can read our post on ‘3 ways your business will benefit from serverless’ here.