With a company as spread out as T.D. Williamson Inc., getting a solid tech infrastructure in place is a challenge, says Rick Bennett, chief information officer at the pipeline integrity company.


"We're an international company with 57 locations in 37 different countries," he said. "As such, it would be cost-prohibitive to have data centers hosting various applications in every location around the world."

That's why many employees at the company do their work with applications that are not loaded on local computers but on distant servers that workers can access from anywhere.

T.D. Williamson is among a growing number of local companies that are turning to or looking into cloud computing, where computer functions are stored online, or "in the cloud."

SpringPoint Technologies, an IT services and staffing company in Tulsa, helps connect businesses with the cloud. President Travis Short says more and more clients are requesting such services.

"We're seeing a lot of adoption of this, primarily with small businesses," he said.

In a broad sense, cloud computing has been around for years. Online e-mail, such as Hotmail or Gmail, was one of the earliest forms of cloud computing.

But in recent years, connections and computing power have improved to the point that more complex computer programs, such as word processing and spreadsheets, can be used via the Internet without a local copy of the program.

This enables employees to access work
functions from anywhere without being chained to their desk computers or expensive local servers. Bennett said employees at T.D. Williamson already use Salesforce.com, a customer relationship management solution, and Workday, a human resource information system, and are looking into using Microsoft Sharepoint, a cloud-based collaboration tool.

SpringPoint's Short said the practice is especially attractive to small businesses without their own IT departments, but even some larger companies with internal IT personnel are moving to the cloud, since it can cut maintenance costs.

"This takes the worry out of keeping e-mail up and running," he said.

Often, the maker of the application also maintains the servers it runs on, eliminating the need for workers to maintain it.

Fred Menge, managing director of Magnir, a local information management consulting firm, said larger companies have been more reluctant to bring their applications online.

"Big companies are a little less suited, since they want to manage their equipment in-house," he said.

Local companies like SpringPoint help customers determine which functions would be good fits within the cloud and connects them with providers of the services. In fact, Short said many big Silicon Valley companies are making a strong push toward cloud computing.

"We're seeing the bigger software manufacturers drive the market in this direction," he said.

Although cloud computing has its advantages, it comes with unique drawbacks. Bennett said that while the initial acquisition costs are much lower than normal, especially when large servers are involved, the recurring fees for the service can add up.

There's also the need for a constant online connection.

"If the Internet's down, you're down," Bennett said.

Still, Short said that disconnections can be less disruptive than local server crashes.

"If they lose access to the Internet, their mail is still flowing," he said. "If their internal e-mail went down, they wouldn't get it."

T.D. Williamson, like other companies considering online work, is carefully weighing its needs and capabilities before moving any function into the cloud, Bennett said.

"We look at every application and the needs of the company," he said, "and then we make the decision."

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