You’ve built your business by making smart decisions—balancing performance with cost, growth with risk. So, when it comes to IT, you’re not necessarily looking for flash. You’re looking for function. Systems that are secure, responsive, and scalable—without eating into your margins or forcing you into major capital investments.
For many small and midsized businesses (SMBs), that balance starts tipping when the IT environment that once served them well begins to slow them down. Maybe it’s an aging on-prem server that crashes during month-end close. Or remote employees struggling to connect to critical systems. Or the constant juggling of patches, updates, and cybersecurity responsibilities piling up on an already stretched team.
This is often when SMB’s journey to the cloud begins. Here’s what that journey might look like as your business moves from traditional IT challenges to streamlined, cloud-based efficiency.
Step 1: Host your Sage ERP in the cloud
If you’re like most SMBs that rely on Sage, your ERP system is the logical first move. It’s the operational core—finance, inventory, purchasing, reporting—and when it’s lagging or vulnerable, you feel the ripple effects across the organization.
Cloud at Work’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for Sage hosting removes the friction. No more managing local servers, worrying about backups, or dealing with slow connections. Your Sage applications run in a secure, high-performance cloud environment designed specifically for Sage workloads. That means better uptime, faster access, and built-in support from people who understand your system inside and out.
And just as important—there’s no big capital outlay. You shift from unpredictable, hardware-based costs to a monthly operating expense that’s easier to forecast and scale.
Step 2: Migrate other applications and workloads
Once Sage is running smoothly in the cloud, the next question may be: what else makes sense to move?
Email, file storage, and productivity tools like Microsoft 365 are often next. Many businesses also bring over analytics platforms, payroll systems, or customer databases. Cloud at Work helps you map out a plan—what to move, when, and how to manage the transition without interrupting day-to-day operations.
Using Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), you can consolidate your environment into one secure, cloud-based foundation. That simplifies IT management, reduces reliance on aging hardware, and improves application performance across the board.
It also opens the door to more connected, integrated systems—making data easier to access, share, and act on across departments.
Step 3: Streamline IT operations with Managed Services
As your cloud environment grows, so do the opportunities to offload day-to-day maintenance and troubleshooting. That’s where Managed IT Services come in.
Instead of spending hours chasing down system alerts or dealing with user support issues, you tap into Cloud at Work’s expert team for ongoing infrastructure management, user provisioning, software updates, and helpdesk support.
This gives your internal team room to focus on projects that move the business forward, not just keep the lights on. It also ensures your environment stays optimized—from performance to security—without needing to grow your IT headcount.
Step 4: Build a proactive cybersecurity foundation
With more business happening in the cloud, security becomes even more critical. But cybersecurity isn’t just about software—it’s about time, expertise, and the ability to stay ahead of evolving threats.
Cloud at Work’s Managed Cybersecurity Services provide layered protection, monitoring, and rapid response without the complexity or cost of building it in-house. That includes:
- 24/7 threat detection and response through Managed XDR
- Protection for endpoints, networks, and cloud apps
- Automated incident containment
- Compliance support
- Employee security training and awareness
The result is a cybersecurity posture that grows with you—one that protects not just your Sage ERP system, but your full IT ecosystem.
Scaling without the sprawl
Every step of this journey adds value—but none of it adds unnecessary complexity. That’s the point. You don’t need ten vendors, five dashboards, and a dozen logins. You need a partner who understands how your business runs and what it takes to support that with reliable, efficient IT.
Cloud at Work brings it all together with a unified approach that aligns with how SMBs grow. Start where it makes sense—Sage ERP hosting—and expand when the time is right. Whether you’re adding users, opening new locations, or launching new services, your cloud environment keeps pace without the cost or hassle of traditional IT scaling.
Performance that supports your next chapter
Ultimately this is about more than saving money—though it does that too. It’s about creating an environment where your systems work the way you need them to, where performance isn’t a barrier to progress. Where your team has the tools they need to succeed, and you have the confidence that your IT foundation is secure, stable, and ready to grow.
If you’re ready to optimize how your business runs—and do it without stretching your budget—let’s talk. Cloud at Work helps small and midsized businesses like yours modernize IT on your terms, one smart step at a time.