That's great marketing copy for spyware^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hsoftware as a service but my father owns a small business staffed with some of the least tech savvy people I've ever met and I can tell you:
- corrupted installs aren't really a thing any more
- hardware failures happen at about the same rate as hardware goes obsolete. If the hardware fails you're buying a new ipad anyways, and unlike a commodity windows PC the iPad can't be repaired.
- malware is still a threat if you have a spyware solution like O365
- as google demonstrates on a regular basis, you can't trust that you'll have access to your cloud backups. If you have data that you actually need, then you need to back it up yourself. Restoring backups takes maybe a few hours a year. Not an issue.
- an iPad is not a substitute for a desktop workstation
>If your device breaks, you toss it, switch to another machine, go to a browser, type in the website, login, and you’re good to go again within seconds. That seems a lot better and faster than paying for in house IT.
Sure until google locks you out of your account for no reason or you realize you're paying insanely high fees per year when your strategy could be to buy a prebuilt system from Dell once or twice a year and copy your backup data from a USB hard drive. For a business of 30 people or so this is perfectly viable.
Instead of having an onsite server running property management system software that has to synchronize inventory with the central reservation system, a web based property management system you can access via a browser has the following benefits for the hotel owner:
1) Don't have to worry about server HDD failures, or any other hardware failures.
2) If power goes out, just browse to the website with a mobile device.
3) Never any inventory issues since there is no synchronization that needs to be done.
4) Revolving door of minimum wage front desk workers who install malware on your Windows computers can't do that anymore if using an iPad or iPad like device, and if they do, it wouldn't result in liability due to theft of people's data. See Marriott/IHG data leaks a few years ago.
5) Lowers labor costs since you don't need someone to troubleshoot technical stuff, other than get a device with an internet connection and a browser.
6) Can move towards a self check in check out system where the guest can basically do it all via an app or the hotel's website, further reducing labor costs.
7) Features can be updated and implemented far more easily when hardware features don't have to be worried about.
- corrupted installs aren't really a thing any more
- hardware failures happen at about the same rate as hardware goes obsolete. If the hardware fails you're buying a new ipad anyways, and unlike a commodity windows PC the iPad can't be repaired.
- malware is still a threat if you have a spyware solution like O365
- as google demonstrates on a regular basis, you can't trust that you'll have access to your cloud backups. If you have data that you actually need, then you need to back it up yourself. Restoring backups takes maybe a few hours a year. Not an issue.
- an iPad is not a substitute for a desktop workstation
>If your device breaks, you toss it, switch to another machine, go to a browser, type in the website, login, and you’re good to go again within seconds. That seems a lot better and faster than paying for in house IT.
Sure until google locks you out of your account for no reason or you realize you're paying insanely high fees per year when your strategy could be to buy a prebuilt system from Dell once or twice a year and copy your backup data from a USB hard drive. For a business of 30 people or so this is perfectly viable.