Cloud services are fundamentally transforming how small businesses operate. No longer do they need to tie up thousands of dollars in local IT infrastructure. With the advent of the cloud, businesses can instead source software and other services directly from the cloud, pay as they go, enjoy a high-quality user experience and access support in real time. Virtually any small business forming today will start using cloud applications on day one and never look back.
To help these business owners, we’re introducing Upware a simple to use, cloud-based marketplace stocked with applications from Comcast and partners to meet a range of business needs. We’ve organized the store into three simple aisles that include data backup, data security and collaboration tools from industry-leading companies including Box, Carbonite, DigitalSafe, Microsoft, Mozy, Norton, Soonr, Websense and YouSendIt.
In the past, small businesses struggled with a scarcity of IT. Ironically, the cloud flips the small business IT challenge on its head. The cloud suddenly brings a huge number of IT choices to the small business owner. However, in a world with hundreds of easily accessible cloud-based options, small business owners struggle with a number of issues that Upware is uniquely designed to address.
First, small business owners face too many choices and they don’t know who to trust. For Upware, we set the bar high in terms of the service quality we expect for our customers. Each vendor was chosen because they are able to deliver the kind of business-grade solutions our customers should expect.
Second, managing user IDs and passwords for business software can be a real headache for a small business owner. For example, a 10 employee company using five cloud applications can mean managing 50 different accounts. Our Upware website, however, makes it easy for business owners to manage all their employee accounts and grant application access as needed. Employees, in turn, simply log in to the Upware portal and start their cloud applications with one click.
Third, when there are support issues with a cloud service, who do business owners call? The Upware support team can diagnose whether a problem is due to Internet access, a user-id issue or if an issue is with a partner service itself. If it’s a problem with the Internet connection, the Upware login or basic troubleshooting related to a partner application, we can address it directly. If a problem with a partner application is beyond our staff’s ability to solve, we’ve established live transfer support to each Upware partner.
We’re offering business owners a whole new set of tools to help them connect to the cloud and be competitive. Upware offers a great selection of partners right now and we’ll continue to carefully select and add new solutions in the near future.