If you lose your phone, or your home internet goes down because you haven’t decided to find the best internet provider deals on the market (go here to learn more), how long does it take before panic sets in?
What you’ve lost is a vital form of connection to the world – social interaction, information, and entertainment at your fingertips, all temporarily disappeared. With the wealth of devices available for web browsing now, from tablets to smartphones, TVs to glasses, many of us have become reliant on technology.
It’s not a new thing – spell-checkers and calculators have long been accused of “dumbing-down” users, but in recent years it’s accelerated. Our cars are filled with technology to the point where some problems cannot be fixed except with an expensive trip to a specialist; social media has seen vast slumps in the numbers of letters sent, and we depend on it to stay in touch with friends around the world; search engines bring up whatever information we’re looking for at the touch of a button – handy, yes, but does it weaken our analytical or critical abilities, or reduce our attention spans?
~In business~
Many businesses have come to depend on technology for growth. Indeed in some sectors, such as finance, technology has begun to supersede the importance of humans, in analysing information and making time-sensitive decisions.
It may be of particular importance to small businesses, which need to maximise the return on small budgets. By developing e-commerce sites that are responsive on mobile devices they can sell to a far wider market 24/7; by effectively utilising social media and email they can develop their brand and dramatically cut the cost of traditional forms of marketing; and by using the Cloud for internet services they are able to reduce capital spend and ensure their web applications are the latest spec, enabling them to remain competitive.
~Can the Cloud help?~
That last point is worth considering further. When we place too much unthinking reliance on technology it becomes a major source of risk. If a business was to suffer a fire at its premises and the servers holding their customer database were damaged, it could cause irreparable harm. Or if their website was hacked, how much impact would that have on their ability to turn a profit?
Could Cloud technology be the answer to this?
Storing data in the Cloud adds an extra level of security vital for sensitive or valuable information, plus it can be sent and retrieved immediately. Safety concerns can be almost nullified.
Similarly for web hosting – if a business has its site hosted by an established Cloud provider then it can be confident that should there be any issues, there is a team of specialists on hand to get the site up-and-running again quickly.
Obviously the point can be made that a business may then become too reliant on its Cloud provider, but when using a company which has experience and a strong track-record, and which has the IT resources that many small-medium businesses can only dream of, spreading the risk like this could be a sensible option.
Arguably yes, both people and business have become too reliant on technology to some extent. But when it is becoming so resilient, and has the ability to utterly transform the ways we live and work, can you blame us?
This article was provided by http://www.chocolush.co.uk/
