Businesses are migrating to the cloud to reduce cost and allow themselves to focus on projects and activities that drive revenue, profits, and customer satisfaction. According to Gartner Inc., 80 percent of enterprises will shut down their traditional data centre by 2025 and migrate to the cloud (1). Here’s a list of the 5 reasons cloud services save businesses money.
1) Security
The cloud secures your data. An employee’s computer crash can cause extensive financial loss for a business; It could result in losing a long list of qualified leads, for instance. Cloud computing gives you security when this happens. Because your data is stored in the cloud, you can access it no matter what happens to your device.
The cloud can also give you more reliable network security. Andrew Bagrin, Founder and CEO of OmniNet says, “Internet connectivity is now getting more congested because it is much more heavily utilized for all applications. Cloud firewalls help filter all the garbage traffic before it pollutes the access networks.” Cloud firewalls scrub “bad” traffic out before it reaches your access network.
In addition, hosting firewall services in the cloud gives you better protection at a lower cost; You don’t need to worry about constantly monitoring your firewall as you have professional security firms doing it for you. This takes away the risk of unwanted intruders breaking through your firewall when you’re not looking.
2) Flexibility
Cloud-based services are the solution to keeping up with growth in your business. If your needs increase it’s easy to scale up cloud by adding licensing. Likewise, if you need to scale down again, many services are flexible enough to allow you to do so. This level of agility can provide a real competitive advantage. And, it can mostly be done with several clicks of a button, saving you IT time.
And with most serious cloud services offering mobile apps, you’re not restricted by which device you’re using. As a result, businesses can offer more flexible working perks to employees so they can enjoy the work-life balance that suits them without productivity taking a hit
3) Lower Costs
Cloud computing cuts out the upfront capital and high cost of hardware. You simply pay as you go and enjoy an OPEX, subscription-based model that doesn’t make a huge, one-time dent in your budget. The bonus is that it’s extremely simple to setup and manage. Cloud services ultimately allow you to save time and make more money.
4) Easy, Hands-Off Operation
Gartner Inc. reports that the “Cloud is an attractive option for organizations because it typically enables developers and other technical team members to be more productive (2).” Servers in the cloud are off-premise, out of sight and out of your hair. Suppliers take care of them for you and roll out regular software updates, including security updates, so you don’t have to worry about wasting time maintaining the system yourself. This leaves you free to focus on the things that matter, like growing your business.
5) More Effective Teamwork
When your teams can access, edit and share documents anytime, from anywhere, they’re able to do more together, and do it better. Cloud-based workflow and file sharing apps helps your team make updates in real time and gives them full visibility of their collaborations. The more employees and partners collaborate on documents, the greater the need for tight document control. Before the cloud, workers had to send files back and forth as email attachments to be worked on by one user at a time. Resulting in conflicting file content, formats and titles. Greater visibility means improved collaboration, which ultimately means better work.
Transforming Business
The cloud is drastically changing the networking landscape. It’s enabling businesses to save costs and access applications from anywhere in the world, while giving them more time to focus on their core business functions. In order to reap the benefits of using the cloud, you need make sure you have reliable connectivity, redundancy, bandwidth ROI, and encryption to keep your data is secure. When used correctly, the cloud has the ability to transform business.
Find out how you can change the way you network with SD-WAN, contact us today.
Footnotes:
1- Tiny Haynes, Gartner Inc.: Prepare for the Death of the Data Center as We Know It (Research Roundup: Building and Marketing Cloud-Based Offerings — 2Q18, 2018).
2- Kevin Ji, Gartner Inc.: Build the Right Justification for Moving to the Cloud (Refreshed 27 July 2018, Published 15 May 2017).