Pub. 2 2012-2013 Issue 5

12 O V E R A C E N T U R Y : B U I L D I N G B E T T E R B A N K S - H E L P I N G C O L O R A D A N S R E A L I Z E D R E A M S FEATURE ARTICLE “As a business owner, are you comfortable with the IT business plan of server sprawl? If not, research the cloud and what it can do for your specific business.” Why Cloud? – A Tale of Server Sprawl O nceuponatime therewasamanwho likedto help people. He was good at helping people reach their dreams in business and in their personal lives. He decided to open a bank so hecouldmakegoodhonest loans togoodhonestpeople. He bought all the necessities to make a bank work. But his biggest investment was the people he hired to help him. Soon, however, he had to start buying computers. Then he had to buy servers. Then he had to find a room to put the servers in. Pretty soon he had to buy more comput- ers and more servers because the first ones broke down. There were always computer problems. So he hired someone to maintain the computers and servers. He expanded the server room. He expanded his IT staff. Every year his budget grew. Every year computers and servers broke down and he bought new ones. He bought a data center and hired more people to manage his data. Years flew by. He wondered what had happened. How had he turned his business into a computer company – instead of what he wanted to do – help people. NATHAN DAHLSTROM Aspire Sales Representative CoNetrix