The cloud has been around for long enough now that everyone is probably using it in one form or another. Your Facebook status updates, or banking app – they are all cloud services. And it’s fair to say that many businesses are turning to the cloud for critical services, such as servers and databases.
The simple truth is that the cloud is becoming standard, not something that is out of the ordinary. But there are still some competitive advantages of moving your IT operations to cloud-based services. Let’s take a look at everything you need to know.
More flexible than your rivals
Ultimately, the cloud allows businesses to be more flexible. If your Internet company has fluctuations in demand, the cloud lets you change your capacity to your needs. Scale up, or scale down – choose the right service, and none of it is a problem.
Ease the pain of updates
Updating standalone software and systems takes a considerable amount of time. And there is always the risk of getting it wrong, which can impact your business by a significant amount. When you use cloud services, none of those pains are necessary. Everything is done for you, automatically. And you can free up your time to do more valuable tasks for your business.
A get-out for disasters
Is your business ready for an emergency? A lot of things can happen to your business that can cause severe damage. If your systems go offline, you will lose customers and prospects. It is essential that you minimize downtime with disaster recovery services. And the cloud makes it simple to recover from the most extreme events.
Remote working
Another example of the cloud’s flexibility is that it allows for remote working. It means you can be more flexible with workers, and enable them to improve their work-life balance. Don’t underestimate how much this can attract talent. More people than ever would swap a proportion of their pay for the ability to work from home. And most importantly they can collaborate with team members at the office. Productivity won’t suffer.
Better collaboration
Teams can work on projects together in different parts of the world with the cloud. The benefits of this are enormous to startups and small businesses. Not only can you hire people to work from home. But you can also outsource work to other countries, for far less cost. Accessing this kind of opportunity has always been hard for smaller firms. But make no mistake about it – the cloud is helping to level the playing field.
Security
If someone loses a laptop with sensitive programs or information in it, you could face big trouble. However, when you use cloud services, many of them allow you to wipe that data remotely. It will give you peace of mind, and a lot more control over the results of theft.
The impact of which could otherwise be horrendous for your business. Again, cloud service providers are constantly working on ways to improve their apps and enhance security to serve customers better.
Are you using the cloud? If so, why not tell us about your experiences? And if not, why not? Let us know your thoughts on cloud services for business in the comments section below.