More than 90% of the organizations around the world are using cloud services. This is based on the McAfee study in 2016 entitled Building Trust in a Cloudy Sky: The State of Cloud Adoption and Security. It was also shown in the study that the trust and perception on public cloud services improved over the years.
If your company is planning to adopt a Cloud First Strategy, it is best to understand why this strategy can benefit your business in terms of cost reduction, scalability, and flexibility, and how it can help in your business continuity management.
Reduced IT Costs
There are plenty of good reasons why a shift to cloud computing makes sense, but it’s clear that it saves money. You can reduce your IT costs in terms of hardware, power consumption, and people costs.
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Zero Hardware Capital Costs
With cloud computing, there is no need to purchase expensive hardware. This will cut the upfront capital investment in purchasing your own servers and software licenses. You will only pay for the capacity, services, and applications suited to the needs of your business. Usage can easily be scaled up as your business demands increase.
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Lower Power Costs
In a typical data center, hardware setup is not fully utilized but even idle servers consume energy. Cloud computing ensures better hardware utilization resulting in a more efficient use of power. It means that a cloud service provider can charge you less for energy than when you are running your own servers.
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Lower People Costs
A cloud service provider does almost everything for you. There is no need to hire several experts to maintain servers, fix issues or do software updates. However, there is a need to train your current staff on the basics of cloud computing and more importantly on how to manage security risks. Less maintenance is needed, thus you can lower the number of people in your IT Department. This will surely decrease your expense in recruiting and hiring good IT people, which sometimes outweighs the costs of hardware and software combined.
Scalability and Flexibility
Cloud allows flexibility in setting up what is essential to your business. You can scale up or scale down your cloud usage, and pay only for what you are actually using. Cloud offers convenience in scaling the storage capacity and installing software updates. Moreover, cloud environment also provides a more efficient collaboration in the organization.
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Scalable Storage Capacity
Cloud offers unlimited storage capacity, and this is ideal for businesses with fluctuating bandwidth demands. If your business needs more, you can easily scale up your cloud capacity and may decide to scale down anytime if needed. In the past, it takes months to upgrade servers but this service is achievable immediately with cloud. If you run your own data center, you may need to purchase more servers as backups in case of failure. However, maintaining idle hardware is an expensive uptime strategy.
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Automatic Software Updates
Cloud also offers software updates automatically. It makes sure that installed software is up-to-date with the latest versions. Instead of doing the download and installation, it is automatically done for you. Automated file synchronization is also provided to make sure that all of your devices are continually kept consistent.
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Collaboration Efficiency
Collaboration in cloud environment allows more flexibility in work practices. This is useful if you are working on projects across different locations. You may decide to give your employees, contractors, clients and other stakeholders access to shared data. With documents accessible to the teams anytime and anywhere, they are able to collaborate and do more together. Documents can be viewed or edited simultaneously from multiple user locations. Real-time access using multiple devices from anywhere makes it easier for teams to collaborate. Visibility improves collaboration and prevents the document control issues encountered before.
Business Continuity
Cloud computing also benefits a company in terms of data security and competitiveness. Protecting data is an important aspect of business continuity management. With minimal downtime, it helps business to remain competitive in their respective market. Moreover, better cloud analytics is also an effective way of managing market opportunities.
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Data Security
Cloud computing provides greater security because your data is stored on servers that are off-site. When you experience natural disasters, power failure, and other possible risks, your data is safe and secure. You will be able to resume business quickly; minimizing your downtime and loss of productivity. With automatic updates, you are also assured that your system is updated with the latest security patches.
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Competitiveness
Cloud allows small businesses to scale up their capacity fast and with less cost. It means that startups can already compete with their established competitors. With better cloud analytics available, businesses can also drive rapid innovation and improve their customer engagement.
Conclusion
Moving to cloud computing is a major business decision. Many organizations are now transitioning to cloud to keep pace with their partners, suppliers, and competitors. Although trust of cloud services has improved in that study of McAffee in 2016, it was also found out that 60% of engineering firms said that scarcity of security skills is slowing down their adoption. These organizations understand that, while it is possible to outsource cloud services, it is not possible to outsource risks. Cloud computing can reduce cost and increase business flexibility, but it also needs a more proactive security management.