In today’s world, the cloud has become one of the most talked about buzzwords among business environments, and it’s safe to say that won’t be changing anytime soon. In fact, the cloud is becoming the technology standard for most companies. By the end of 2020, 67% of enterprise infrastructure will be cloud-based.
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If you haven’t made the switch yet, you may be exploring the possibility. Therefore, we have gone through the top 10 benefits that are worth considering.
Scalability
Hardware goes through a lifecycle and is fixed once you get it. More capacity means a large investment of a sizeable sunk cost. If a business decides they do not need the hardware anymore and it has not got to the end of its lifecycle, they can end up with wasted, unused space.
With the cloud, it is as easy to scale up your cloud capacity as it is to scale it down. Because of this, it makes it ideal for organisations with growing or fluctuating needs and can give them a real edge over competitors - it’s no wonder that CIOs and IT Directors rank ‘operational agility’ as a top driver for cloud adoption.
Cost effectiveness
One of the biggest benefits of moving to the cloud is the cost-effectiveness of a cloud solution. It’s no secret that on-site infrastructure is expensive. Cloud environments remove the need of investing in costly servers and computers and instead operate on a subscription model, where you only pay for what you use. Therefore, rather than paying for hardware that depreciates the longer you have it, you pay based on the number of users and storage volume. Additionally, the energy costs to run everything on-site isn’t cheap either.
Security
One of the biggest worries business leaders have about moving the cloud is that it isn’t secure as their servers aren’t on-site where they can keep control of what happens to them. But really, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The cloud lifts your sensitive data from your hardware, so it is not at risk should your servers become compromised or damaged, or if a device is lost. You can even remotely revoke access at anytime to ensure your files don’t get into the wrong hands.
Cloud providers are aware how important security is and most will endeavour to maintain the strictest of security practices for their customers. At entrustIT, we take security very seriously. That’s why we invested to obtain and maintain the ISO 27001 accreditation and why all European customer data is stored in UK based datacentres with their own ISO 27001 certification. Furthermore, we highly recommend that all our customers use two-factor authentication for their cloud environments to ensure only the correct individuals can access them.
Disaster Recovery and Backup
Business data is one of the most important assets in a company. If data is stored on-site, important information could be lost if a disaster was to strike. Many cloud environments have backup and disaster recovery built in, making it easier than ever for businesses to stay safe.
The entrustIT cloud backup solution will ensure your data remains safe by taking regular screenshots of your data. Therefore, if the unexpected happens, you will be able to quickly restore the backup.
Competitiveness
Building an IT infrastructure takes time, skill, money and most of all experience - something that SMEs may never reach. Because of this, smaller companies are often left behind the big players. The cloud evens the playing field and makes enterprise-grade technology available to everyone.
Increased Collaboration
In today’s workplace, there are so many technologies that companies use to leverage collaboration and the cloud is the main driver of this. Documents in the cloud can be accessed wherever employees may be in the world so they can work together whether they are in different cities, or even countries.
Office 365 and Microsoft 365 Enterprise are both popular cloud-based services with many tools that have shaped collaboration in the workplace as we know it. For example, tools such as Teams, SharePoint and Planner provide one place for conversations, meetings, files and data, and empowers employees to work together to meet business goals.
Maximise uptime
Outages normally happen without warning. If you’re a business that works on a 9-5 basis, this may happen overnight, making it harder to deal with once it is discovered. Cloud providers will monitor your infrastructure 24/7 for any issues so they can deal with them before they become serious problems. Therefore, your business is up and running at all times and you can focus on your bottom line.
Mobility
Traditional on-site infrastructure constrains you to your office and makes it difficult for employees to work on-the-go. The cloud gives users an unparalleled level of freedom, allowing them to choose exactly where and when they work. Additionally, cloud services often work cross-platform which means users are not restricted by which device they’ve got to hand.
The result? Businesses can meet the ever-growing desire of the modern workforce by offering remote working and let their employees enjoy the work-life balance.
Document control
The more employees are collaborating online, the greater the need of stronger document control. Before the cloud, employees would have go through the tedious process of emailing documents back and forth to each other, making changes one by one. Before you know it, you have 100 versions of the same documents all with different titles.
With the cloud, all documents are stored centrally. You can track and easily pick out which documents can be edited, viewed and shared by which users.
Environmentally friendly
In addition to all these benefits for your business, moving to the cloud isn’t entirely a selfish act. Cloud computing not only uses less physical severs, but as you only use the energy you need, you don’t leave any oversized carbon footprints.
A study by Microsoft has found that cloud storage can be between 79-93% more energy efficient than a traditional on-premise data centre.
Cloud computing has become highly popular among businesses of all sizes because it offers considerable cost savings together with increased security, collaboration and greater scalability. We are now at a point where the benefits of cloud computing over traditional on-site infrastructure are too significant to ignore for both small businesses and large corporate enterprises.
entrustIT have over a decade of experience with the cloud and offer businesses a wide selection of cloud computing solutions. Whether you require cloud backup to protect your files online and improve disaster recovery, or a full cloud workspace with elements like these built in, we have a solution for you. We are your complete cloud IT provider. If you think you’re ready take the next step but aren’t sure the best way to get there, we have experts on hand to assist you with your journey to the cloud.
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