By leveraging cloud technology, your business doesn’t just modernize; it takes the next step toward enduring success in the digital age. From your internal operations for employee satisfaction and productivity to customer satisfaction and external reach, the cloud is today’s key to success.
Before the end of the year, roughly 90% of global companies will have at least one application or a part of their infrastructure hosted in the cloud. In the current climate, with many people working from home, many are predicting that number will continue to grow, expanding into medium- and small-sized organizations.
So, why is hosting your business’s infrastructure in the cloud so important? Whether you’ve just opened or been in business for decades, there are several benefits to cloud technology.
1) Cost-Effective:
Moving your applications and IT infrastructure will help your business avoid the standard costs of on-premise servers such as licensing fees, management costs, updates, storage, and other resources. Some organizations have been able to save between 30%–50% by moving to the cloud instead of updating their on-premise infrastructure.
2) Secure:
Data privacy and security persist as a significant concern for any business considering cloud migration. However, with the right provider and protocols in place, the cloud can be an incredibly safe place for business-critical data. Not only are cloud hosts making security their top priority, but companies are also using encryption services, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and other governance policies to ensure data privacy. With the right combination, a business can see massive improvements to their security and enjoy the ease of compliance that accompanies cloud technology.
3) Flexible and Scalable:
The demands of your business are constantly changing, and cloud platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are inherently designed to match the need to scale up or down to meet those demands. Rather than trudging through the process of upgrading or downgrading on-premise infrastructure, your cloud platform can be easily scaled to match bandwidth and storage requirements.
4) Mobility:
Having the ability to do business wherever you are is vital. Whether you’re working from home or closing deals on the road, access to corporate data via the cloud improves efficiency and gives employees the flexibility to do their jobs wherever and whenever.
5) Enhanced Collaboration:
More than a third of America’s workforce has been relocated to remote working environments, which means the need for collaboration is at an all-time high. Most cloud platforms offer exceptional data visibility, useful dashboards, cross-platform project management, and other collaborative services to keep everyone on the same page.
6) Data Connectivity:
Internal business applications have opened the door to new levels of efficiency and improved customer experience. Today, most businesses — small and large — are using anywhere between ten to 200 applications, which requires precise data connectivity, and cloud platforms offer this in full. From accounting and HR to sales and customer support, the information each team needs is always at their fingertips.
7) DR and Loss Prevention:
Disasters happen, and while preventing unforeseen events isn’t easy, there are ways to speed up recovery time. When you opt to migrate your IT infrastructure to the cloud, you’re enrolling in a system that will increase data recovery time, prevent data loss, and ultimately minimize downtime for a quick bounce back from any disaster situation.
8) Efficiency and Productivity:
In our fast-paced business climate, efficiency and productivity are the names of the game. With a cloud environment, automatic updates are tailored to your schedule, applications and data are accessible from anywhere, and app dev in the cloud allows your business to deploy its applications to the market rapidly. Whether you’re looking to reduce IT resources or speed-up development/deployment, the cloud gives you both.
9) Access Control:
Data collection, quality, and access are pivotal pieces of any data governance initiative, driving productivity, security, and collaboration. With everything hosted in the cloud, you can control every employee’s access and guarantee accurate documentation and recording.
10) Competitive Edge:
All these benefits boil down to the most crucial advantage of all: an edge over the competition. While your competitors continue to host their data in on-premise systems, your business can enjoy the upper hand that cloud platforms offer. Now, staying on-premise isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and many companies prefer to keep their data onsite. However, transitioning to the cloud will inevitably offer distinct advantages over one that doesn’t.
Cloud technology gives companies of every size and industry an opportunity to take the next step in business operations, and with all the benefits we’ve discussed here, there are still more to come. If decades of experience have taught us anything, we’re just at the beginning of the cloud’s potential.
If you have any questions or concerns about the benefits of cloud technologies, feel free to engage with us via the comments below or reach out to us here. We’re always happy to talk.