Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) isn't just plaguing 7^th graders on their first day of school. The FUD about moving critical applications to the cloud has been gripping the minds of business professionals, paralyzing with the "what ifs" "buts" and the "did-you-hears" … but for many, that was years ago. If you're still one of the individuals who believe a server locked in a back room of your office is safer, more efficient, or less costly than the cloud, you could consider this a wakeup call.

Yes, it's time to modernize your practice and leave the previous generation's way of doing things behind. Clean out that back room and put it to better use, like an employee break room – a foosball table would be a nice addition (Charlie and Janice in accounting bribed me to say that).

The cloud is simply a service provider that makes resources available to the public consumer or private organization – either free or on a pay-per-usage model (think Gmail). Simple, right? You bet, but the public cloud space isn't for everyone, and certainly not all types of businesses and industries – I'm talking about those of you in legal, financial, healthcare, education, real estate, or any business that has some type of compliance, regulation, security, data location restrictions, data ownership and accessibility, redundancy, disaster recovery, or auditing responsibilities.

To be able to get the benefits of a non-public cloud that meets compliance requirements in highly regulated markets, AND avoids the ridiculous amounts of money required to deploy your own private cloud, you need an enterprise-grade Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application.

There are a lot of new players on the block, but we're not new to the game: NetDocuments, Salesforce.com, and likely a handful of others have been up and running as a true multi-tenant cloud service since 1999. Do you remember what the internet looked like in 1999? Neither do I, but building and improving on the cloud model for over a decade means you could consider the team at NetDocuments cloud experts. We know what we're doing; having built the service from the ground up as a web application – unlike many of our competitors, whose expertise is founded on the server-based (on-premise) model and who are just now trying to incorporate cloud-like features (like internet access to server-based systems).

Another critically important feature about true SaaS companies is that the service evolves through multiple updates per year. This means that as the internet has evolved, so has the service, functionality, and the underlying technology that's driving the service. All of this translates to lower costs (remember, no server in your back room), built-in disaster recovery, true mobility, and a compliant service that is managed by experts and delivered over the internet.

Leave security and compliance to the experts: Are you willing to go through the grueling process to be SEC, FINRA, and HIPAA compliant? Complete a SSAE-16 (SOC 2) certification audit? Replicate data across geographically disperse, federally regulated datacenters? Implement AES-256 encryption when data is in transit AND at rest? What about data obfuscating (word of the day) of data over 1.5 million directory nodes? Perform regular penetration tests and deploying a staff for 24X7 monitoring? This is exactly what NetDocuments security and compliance teams focus on every single day.

Take a look at this whitepaper for all the details, or schedule a live web demo with one of our experts to learn how NetDocuments' proven cloud technology will eliminate your FUD surrounding the cloud and increase your firm's ability to get more done with less.

Charlie and Janice will thank you.