What your business is losing when not leveraging the cloud
According to the State of the Cloud report compiled by Flexera, businesses anticipate their spend on cloud solutions will grow by 47% in 2020. This rise in popularity is unsurprising when you consider the many benefits cloud services can bring to an organization. Here are five of these benefits your business will miss out on when you’re not leveraging the cloud:
1. Scalable data storage
One of the most prominent challenges organizations face when it comes to technology is anticipating their requirements, both now and in the future. If you’re a growing business, your needs will evolve along with your organization.
When you rely on in-house technology, your data storage is crucial to support your growth. If your data capacity is insufficient, it will impact your ability to hit your targets and achieve your goals. However, it’s a fine line between ensuring you have adequate data storage to support growth and avoiding unnecessary costs of unused data storage capacity.
This dilemma is one area of cloud solutions that can help a growing business, by providing the ability to scale data storage capabilities quickly. When you migrate data storage to the cloud, you pay for exactly what you need — knowing you can increase that capacity if you find yourself low on space.
2. Reduced hardware requirements
Similarly, cloud solutions reduce hardware requirements and associated costs. When you run all your infrastructure in-house, you will likely spend money on unnecessary hardware.
It’s not only the initial set-up costs that need to be considered, but also the ongoing costs associated with the maintenance of the hardware, security upgrades, and repairs when things go wrong.
It’s important not to underestimate these costs, particularly as the organization grows. Operations can quickly exceed current hardware capacity, resulting in expensive and unanticipated infrastructure projects.
When you migrate to the cloud, you benefit from your cloud service provider’s extensive hardware capabilities without needing to consider upgrades, maintenance, or repairs.
3. Collaborative working
How well do your teams work together? Cloud solutions facilitate collaboration across the organization, providing a shared platform in which the relevant stakeholders can access files, applications, and share other essential documents.
All this occurs regardless of location, ensuring collaborative working when teams are working remotely or in different geographical areas.
4. Security
According to a recent DSM report, 66% of IT professionals claim security is one of the main barriers preventing them from adopting cloud services. However, security concerns are often misplaced when it comes to cloud computing. Research consistently shows that around 90% of all data breaches are the result of human error. This statistic means your security is much more likely to be compromised by your employees than by migration to cloud-based infrastructure.
Cloud service providers take the security of their data incredibly seriously. They have to, as a data breach caused by their negligence, would be disastrous to their reputation. Consequently, it’s likely security would improve when migrating to a cloud solution — provided your employees use it correctly, in line with your internal security procedures and protocols.
5. Improved service offerings
Finally, when you do not move to the cloud, you restrict your service offerings. The many benefits of cloud computing — reduced cost, improved productivity, and better collaboration — provide endless opportunities for you to improve the services offered to your customers.
Don’t miss out. Get in touch to discuss how we can assist you in migrating to the cloud.