As we head into 2012 Small and Medium Businesses no longer see cloud computing as a trend, it’s now business as usual. According to Forrester’s Holger Kisker, 2012 is the year cloud becomes mature. This is the trend we are seeing with our customers as their business and IT infrastructure needs grow.

There are real business benefits in moving to the cloud for many companies. Benefits include increased ease of scaling IT as the business grows, freeing up resources, quick implementation of IT resources and new technology without disrupting existing services, and overall improved quality of IT services within the company. The below infographic outlines a practical framework for moving your business to the cloud.

Healthcare organizations face not only public relations issues each time a medical record is lost, the financial impact can also be quite significant. If an employee loses a briefcase containing 10 patients’ medical records, the healthcare provider is held liable for costs associated with losing each of the 10 patients’ records. This cost might not seem like a big number in terms of a healthcare organization’s risk-benefit analysis. However, if you consider that a standard USB drive can hold more than 25,000 medical records and that losing these records could cost a healthcare organization $ 6.4 million in data breach costs. That’s a huge penalty for such a small device.

As a profusion of mobile devices–laptops, USB drives, cell phones, PDAs, and tablets–continue to swarm the modern marketplace, health information has never been more portable and at risk.

The mobile computing environment is further complicated by the intersection of business and consumer technologies. Today both employees and patients can use unsecured personal mobile devices to carry or access health information. This could have unforeseen consequences, as was the case for a US health insurance firm that lost 1.5 million clients’ medical reports on an unencrypted portable drive that was discovered to be missing from the company’s office in 2009. The organization’s decision to save on encryption expenses resulted in $250,000 spent on lawsuit fines, $319,500 in letters to the affected clients, and $1,000,000 for free ID theft monitoring services to the victims.

It should come as no surprise then that mobile devices were identified as the biggest concern in a Dell moderated Focus Groups with 50 CIOs representing small to large hospitals, IDNs, and commercial and government entities.

The Department of Health and Human Services conducted a study looking at 189 breaches of 500 or more records, 52 percent were from theft, 20 percent unauthorized access, 16 percent from loss. In fact, the Ponemon Institute estimated the total economic burden of data breaches on US hospitals about $12 billion.

Why is the breach of 500 records or more significant? If an organization loses more than 500 records containing PHI in a single event, they are required to a) notify HHS no later than 60 days, b) notify at least 3 prominent media outlets in the regions where the patients with breached records live. Upon notification, HHS will post an entry on their website listing the organization, the breach date, and the number of records breached. In today’s world of rising consumerism, this type of public notification can potentially lead to loss of future business.

Electronic health information is here to stay. To improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare, we need interoperable electronic health records and information management infrastructures that make information needed by caregivers for diagnosis and decision-making safe and secure.

To properly manage security in a mobile environment, organizations will need to ask themselves several questions. For instance, is the hospitals network virtualized so that information is managed in the datacenter, not on the device? What devices are being used to access and store health information? Do the devices have enterprise-class information security? Are these devices employee owned? How can organizations lock lost devices to prevent unauthorized access to information? Can the data on these devices be encrypted? Can I have one mechanism for managing authentication credentials across all devices in the enterprise? While organizations will frame their own security policies, many will find that incorporating employee-owned devices into those policies could enhance flexibility, reduce costs, and improve satisfaction.

Irrespective of their preferred approach, organizations will need to consider information security best practices as a part of their overall mobile technology and­ security strategy. For instance, both enterprise-integrated mobile devices and employee/patient-owned mobile devices need to be more secure with identity authentication, encryption, tracking/trace software, anti-malware, backups and extensive monitoring. An integrated approach requires an enterprise security strategy versus point solutions, and must be driven by an overall mobile security strategy.

In an environment where change is the only constant, it is important for organizations to adopt an approach to security threats that enables them to embrace and drive change. Effective mobile device security is a crucial component to making health information truly accessible and secure.

- by Dave Marchand, Washington Report

Author: Rhonda Abrams, who is the Small Business and Entrepreneurship columnist for USAToday.

The other day, I saw a TV commercial for a consumer product, and the ad mentioned, off-handedly, that the product was connected to the cloud. The product being advertised wasn’t a tablet, smart phone or other popular consumer device—perhaps it was a car or household appliance. But when I heard the ad mention the cloud, it hit me—the cloud’s not just for techies anymore.

Face it, the cloud has arrived. It reminds me of a familiar turning point back in the 1990s when you no longer had to explain words like “Internet,” “online,” and “Web,”—people knew what you were talking about. Mention the cloud now and odds are folks aren’t just looking at the sky – the cloud’s now mainstream.

But once a technology achieves mainstream status, we demand more from it. That’s because our needs and expectations for a mainstream technology—rather than an experimental technology—differ. We move away from a technology that’s only for “early adopters” who put up with instability, unreliability, and lack of performance for the joy of being the first to explore a given technology. Instead, once we depend on a technology to run our businesses, we demand minute-by-minute reliability and performance.

Business managers and IT personnel have eagerly embraced the cloud because it provides solutions to things they need done. But they bring a different perspective to their evaluation of cloud solutions than early tech tinkerers (or as I very fondly refer to them, “techies”).

Here’s what today’s business cloud adopters look for:
•A “toaster,” not a tool box. By toaster, I mean that cloud solutions for businesses now need to be more like a mechanism that enables users to perform critical tasks easily and reliably, without needing significant expertise. They want their cloud solutions to increase productivity rapidly and give them powerful capabilities they didn’t have before, or couldn’t get without significant effort.
•To configure, not customize. Okay, maybe they want a “toaster oven”—by which I mean, companies looking to the cloud need the ability to adapt cloud solutions to their particular needs, industry, and business style. But they don’t want to spend the time and money it takes to build applications and solutions from scratch.
•Here-to-stay, not fly-by-night. When a company adopts a cloud solution as an integral part of day-to-day business, it wants to make sure its provider will be around for the long run. The reality is that many of today’s cloud application providers won’t have long-term staying power. Companies can’t afford to bet on a horse that might be scratched from the race.
•Best of breed, not best we can find. To be competitive, companies want the best tools out there. But it takes time—and expertise—to figure out what the best solutions are. A reliable partner can help them identify best of breed cloud solutions.
•Integrated, not independent. Stand-alone applications inevitably mean lack of productivity—often requiring double- or triple-data entry and making it difficult to extract crucial business intelligence. When solutions work together, we save time and money and have greater insight into how our companies are performing.
•Trust. At the end of the day, what businesses want most are solutions and providers they can count on. They want powerful functionality now, continual improvements to make sure they always have the most up-to-date capabilities, customer service when they need it, and world-class security.

Because the cloud is now mainstream, and business customers demand trustworthy partners, we’re now seeing major players, such as Dell, enter the arena. They know that business customers want a reliable partner for the long-haul, with the resources to continue to provide top-of-the-line performance, and the commitment to customer service they demand. And they want one point of contact, so they don’t have to deal with many different providers, keeping track of many different sign-ons.

The reason the cloud has entered our common consciousness is obvious—the cloud presents so many benefits, that once you know about using the cloud, you want more. Whether it’s a consumer storing music, pictures, and phone numbers—or businesses, wanting to be more productive, reduce headaches and costs—the advantages are clear and immediate.

I’m particularly attuned to all things cloud because I have a new book coming out in April, Bringing the Cloud Down to Earth. Get a free digital copy now, though, thanks to Dell Cloud Business Applications by going to www.dellcloudapplications.com. Bottom line- the cloud’s now for everyone. Businesses. Consumers. You. Me. And, yes, even techies.

Rhonda Abrams is the Small Business and Entrepreneurship columnist for USAToday, the author of the bestselling business plan guide in the US – Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies and more than 15 other books for entrepreneurs. Her books are used in 22 of the top 25 entrepreneurship programs in the US and been translated into more than 30 languages. She is the President of PlanningShop, creator of content for entrepreneurs.

Register for her free business tips newsletter at www.PlanningShop.com, “like” PlanningShop’s Facebook page, or follow her on Twitter @RhondaAbrams, Below is Rhonda’s third guest post. You can read her other posts Eight New Year’s Resolutions for the Cloud and When You Think Cloud, Think CRM posts by clicking on those links.