Each year, more and more businesses are taking advantage of cloud solutions. They are becoming popular for multiple reasons; they help to save money, provide great security and enable you to store, manage and process data on a server without needing your own.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some reasons how businesses can benefit from cloud solutions. If you’re a business owner that isn’t using cloud solutions, you will be by the time you’ve finished reading.
1. Saving Money
This is probably the main reason by businesses look at cloud-based solutions. Cloud computing means that you don’t have to own your own hardware. All your webpages are hosted on a remote server, saving you money on the cost of the hardware itself, the space needed to store the hardware and the power to run it all. That’s just a couple of things, not to mention insurance, air-con, maintenance, etc.
2. Instantly Scale
In short, cloud computing is cost-effective and flexible.
Let’s say you have your own data center and you want to scale up. In this case, you must buy the server, which can be expensive, install it and configure it to your own needs. But what if you only need a new server to cover for increased short-term demand?
In this case, you’re spending all that money on something you won’t be utilizing for the majority of the time. Further, if the demand suddenly comes out of the blue, you may not have enough time to get the server up and running.
This is where cloud solutions come into play. You have to ability to scale instantly, whenever you need it. If you receive an increase in unexpected traffic, you can increase your capacity at the click of a button. If the demand then dies down after a few days, you can scale it down accordingly.
Cloud solutions are pay as you so services. You only pay for what you use, so there’s no need for a permanent upgrade to a bigger server for a temporary spike.
3. Gain A Competitive Advantage
As noted by Alex Denholm at Ghost Insights, businesses that use cloud solutions suffer zero lag time. They don’t have to wait for an application to deploy. Everything is done instantly, giving you a competitive advantage over companies in the marketplace that are not using cloud technology.
Further, going back to the scalability factor, smaller companies that would usually find it difficult to compete against larger businesses can work on a level playing field. There’s no need to invest in-house.
4. Readily Available
In the event of servers going down, being offline, even if it’s just for a small period of time, can do a lot of damage to a business’s reputation and bottom line. In-house server failure can take a while to get running again and it will likely cost a fair chunk of money too.
On the other hand, cloud technology is readily available. It’s designed to guarantee constant uptime so you never have to worry about going offline for a second. This covers everything from a single hard disk failing to the entire complex going down.
Businesses on remote servers can migrate their data across the server, so nothing is lost if there’s an issue.
5. Fast Performance Levels
Slow websites are a huge turn off for visitors. As such, cloud solutions are extremely fast so they meet customer demands. Servers come equipped with high-performance technology, such as the most recent and powerful CPU and upgrading SSD drives for the fastest available.
Additionally, cloud solutions use load balancing to realize its full potential in terms of both speed and capacity. This means that, even when servers are tasked with heavy loads, they can be distributed evenly so they don’t experience any problems with performance. Since cloud solutions have many servers on hand, the service provider can ensure optimized performance levels.
6. Use Applications Instantly
Before cloud computing became an option, businesses had to wait for a while to get new applications up and running properly. This no longer has to be a problem.
The cloud gives businesses the chance to use new applications instantly. One really useful application for this comes is when a business wishes to migrate its data to the cloud. In this case, as soon as they’ve signed up for the service, they can benefit from all the AI and machine learning techniques to get deeper insights.
7. Better Security
Businesses that use cloud solutions are better protected against criminal activity or being infected with a virus. This is because service providers must comply with strict regulations to protect personal data. Their security measures include comprehensive firewalls to prevent intrusion and robust virus protection. Cloud service providers are able to detect threats and remove them before they come anywhere near your server. You could even make use of a virtual private network (VPN) for added protection.
8. Be More Flexible
Using cloud solutions gives company employees greater flexibility. If they need to be onsite at a client, they can easily access all the information and files to conduct work. The same goes for when they need to work at home.
From the business’s point of view, giving employees flexible working means that they don’t need as much office space. This means they can save on costs on the office itself and all the equipment an employee may need like desks, chairs, cupboards, etc. In fact, the hot-desk system is becoming more popular for this very reason.
Further, company staff can use their own personal equipment like mobile phones to access the company’s network. All their devices can sync in real-time, making collaboration and online conferences a breeze.
Conclusion
All these reasons show how businesses can benefit from cloud solutions. It saves money, always stays online, it’s easy to scale and is very secure. It’s everything you need from an IT system in the modern world. Businesses that do not use cloud technology are at serious risk of being left behind by the competition.
cloud computing concept -DepositPhotos
