How can businesses take advantage of cloud technology, now that it has become the new normal? No matter what size your company or business is and you haven’t switched to cloud computing yet, now is the time to take advantage of what it can bring to the table. For instance, today around 70 percent of companies worldwide are already using cloud technology in one capacity or another; more importantly, these companies enjoy up to 53 percent faster revenue growth than their competitors.
Evidence clearly shows a growing number of tech-savvy companies that are realizing the advantages of cloud technology. However, more than that, these businesses are using cloud computing run their companies better, serve their clients better, and greatly increase their overall profit margins.
Not convinced yet? Here are more reasons why your business should take advantage of cloud technology.
You can connect to your business anytime, anywhere.
With cloud technology, you can set up shop wherever and use your virtual office to connect to your business anytime, anywhere. This comes in handy whenever you are on the go and still want to monitor your business and do some work while traveling, for instance. Why not? With the growing number of web-enabled devices that are used in today’s business environment, like smartphones, tablets, and 2-in-1 devices, access to your data is even easier.
You can save on IT costs, therefore, your company enjoys lower overall costs.
Switching to cloud technology can lower the cost of managing and maintaining your IT systems. How? With cloud technology, you might not need to invest anymore in new hardware and software—which is always a good thing. Directly connected to this is you may no longer need to pay wages for IT staff as well, and in addition the energy-consumption costs of your company may be effectively reduced.
Your data is virtually disaster-proof.
Cloud-based services provide quick data recovery for all kinds of emergency scenarios’from natural disasters to power outages. While 20 percent of cloud users claim disaster recovery in four hours or less, only 9 percent of non-cloud users could claim the same. In a recent survey, 43 percent of IT executives said they plan to invest in or improve cloud-based disaster recovery solutions.
Acts of God that can disrupt a business should never be underestimated. Natural disasters, especially those that can wreak havoc on infrastructure and data can cost businesses hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars. Let’s be realistic here—there is no way for companies to prevent or even anticipate the disasters that could potentially harm the organization. There is something, however, that can be done to help speed your recovery. With cloud technology, you will be able to retrieve lost data faster; you do this with less hardware, thereby saving you time and money. In a nutshell: essentially the cloud makes your data backups more reliable and, therefore, your data recovery much easier and faster.
Your employees can easily collaborate on documents with you and among themselves—but with the added advantage of a “watertight” document control.
Increased collaboration has become more common in today’s workforce. It goes without saying that your company should be making collaboration a top priority among employees if you want to increase their productivity and make them work well as a team. And cloud technology makes collaboration a simple process. Your team members are able to view and share information easily and securely across a cloud-based platform. In addition, a growing number of cloud-based services can now even provide collaborative social spaces to help employees across your organization connect among themselves, thereby increasing interest and engagement. While collaboration is also possible even without cloud technology, it will never be as effective or easy.
One disadvantage, however, of team members collaborating on documents is that too many cooks can spoil the broth. But with cloud technology, business owners need not worry about this because there is built-in watertight document control. It is virtually impossible for team members to accidentally save different versions of documents, which can lead to confusion. In fact, before the advent of cloud technology, workers had to send files back and forth as e-mail attachments that ended up being worked on by one user at a time but which resulted in a mess of conflicting file content, formats, and titles.
With cloud technology, all documents are stored in one place and in one single format. With all of the team members accessing the same information, everyone maintains data consistency, and human error is kept to a minimum.
Last but not the least, one of the most important points why your business should take advantage of cloud technology: it is both scalable and flexible.
Cloud computing is scalable. This means that no matter of you are a small or big company, you can start with a small amount of storage space and add more as your business collects more data, works on more projects, or expands operations. There is no need for you to invest in expensive hardware, hard drives, or faster CPUs when you switch to cloud computing.
Cloud technology’s flexible cost structure also allows you to use your company’s money more efficiently, with no wasted spending on idle servers.