CIOs working for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face unique challenges that are typically not encountered by their peers in the enterprise space, writes Scott Lowe, founder and managing consultant of the 1610 Group.

Lowe argues that while the question of whether to run on-premises workloads on physical hardware or virtual infrastructure has become easy to answer in the past decade, the choice between on-premise and cloud is still a difficult one for SMBs with limited resources. He explains:

“Even though they may run fewer systems, these firms must maintain IT portfolios that look much like the portfolios from their larger enterprise brethren.  Moreover, they have to do so with fewer people.  As such, IT staffers in these spaces often need to have a wider variety of skill sets, which may mean that they can’t get as deep into a particular area as would be possible with more people.”

Lowe says that CIOs must ask five questions before making the decision to deploy on-site or turn to a provider:

Do I have the staff to run the service in-house?

If a new service requires skills that are not present in the IT department, the CIO must determine whether hiring additional workers or training existing staff is worth the hassle. A cloud provider may be able to support the product at a lesser cost.

Does the service require significant hands-on needs?

If maintenance requires a lot of man-hours, outsourcing may be too expansive. In this situation, the CIO should consider training and hiring in-house.

Would (or does) running the service in-house damage my ability to support the rest of the IT portfolio?

Lowe writes that “anytime something new is added to the portfolio, something has to change.” If a new service disrupts existing systems because resources are spread too thin, turning to a provider is the CIO’s best bet.

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Does this service require more HA or DR need that we currently have in-house?

Deploying a service that requires high availability or recovery  may not justify the price of the associated backup systems and generators needed to keep it running. This is another case where turning to an outside partner is often the best option.

Can my current environment support the service to appropriate levels?

A CIO must assess his organization’s’ infrastructure and determine whether it is capable of supporting a new application. If that is not the case, and the cost of additional infrastructure proved too high, turning to a cloud provider is the only way to go.