The top 10 benefits of moving to the cloud
These days, the cloud is one of the most talked-about buzzwords in business, and it’s safe to say that won’t be changing anytime soon. In fact, research has found that the cloud is becoming the technology standard for most organisations – by the end of 2020, 67% of enterprise infrastructure will be cloud-based.
If you haven’t made the switch yet, you may be exploring the possibility. To help you make your decision, we have gone through some of the top 10 benefits that are worth considering.
Scalability
Hardware is fixed once you get it and then will go through a lifecycle. More capacity means a large investment with a substantial sunken cost. If a company decides they no longer need the hardware and it has not reached the end of its lifecycle, they can end up with wasted, unused space.
With the cloud, scaling up your cloud capacity is as easy as it is to scale down, making it ideal for organisations with growing or fluctuating needs. This can give organisations a real edge over their competitors without cloud-based solutions implemented. 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 cost-effectiveness. It’s no secret that on-site infrastructure is expensive. With cloud environments, you no longer have to invest in high-priced servers and computers as they operate on a subscription model, where you only pay for what you use. So instead of paying for hardware that depreciates the longer you’ve got it, you pay based on the number of users and the volume of storage. Furthermore, energy costs are not cheap either when run everything on-site.
Security
A big concern IT departments have when they consider moving to the cloud is that they are worried it isn’t as secure as their services on-site as this is where they can keep control over what happens to them. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The cloud will lift all your business data from your physical hardware, meaning it is not at risk should your servers become compromised or damaged, or if a device is lost or stolen. You can even remotely revoke access at any time, ensuring your business files and documents don’t get into the wrong hands.
Cloud providers are aware of how important security is and most will endeavour to maintain the strictest of security practices for their customers. As part of the entrust IT Group, 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 strongly recommend to all our customers the use two-factor authentication for their cloud environments so that only the right individuals can access them.
Disaster Recovery and Backup
Data is one of the most important assets in a business. If stored on-site, important information could be lost if a disaster such as fire or flood was to strike. Most cloud environments have backup and disaster recovery already built-in, making it easier than ever for organisations to keep their data safe.
The Serval IT Systems cloud backup solution takes regular screenshots of your data so that if the unexpected happens, you can quickly restore the backup and continue working without any hiccups.
Competitiveness
Building an IT infrastructure requires time, skill, money and, most of all, experience – something that SMEs may struggle to reach. As a result, smaller organisations find themselves being left behind the big players. The cloud levels the playing field and makes enterprise-grade technology available to everyone.
Increased Collaboration
The workplaces today, there are many technologies used by workforces to help leverage collaboration from anywhere – the cloud is the main driver of this. Documents and files stored in the cloud can be accessed by employees no matter if they are in the office, on the road or at home. Therefore, whether they are in different cities or even countries, collaboration with one another is possible.
Microsoft 365 is a popular cloud-based service with many applications and tools that have shaped collaboration in the workplace as we know it. For example, tools such as Microsoft 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 occur without warning. If you’re a business that works on a 9-5 basis, this may suddenly happen overnight, making it far harder to deal with once discovered. Cloud providers often monitor the infrastructure 24/7 for any issues, meaning they deal with them before they evolve into serious problems. Therefore, you can focus on your bottom line as your business stays up and running at maximum efficiency at all times.
Mobility
Traditional on-site infrastructure constrains you to your office, making it difficult for your staff to work on-the-go. As the cloud takes all important data off the physical equipment in your office, users have an unparalleled level of freedom by allowing them to choose exactly where and when they work. Additionally, as cloud services often work cross-platform, users are not restricted by which device they’ve got to hand.
Document control
The more employees collaborate online, the greater the need for stronger control of documents. Before the cloud, employees would go through the tedious process of emailing documents back and forth to each other, making changes one by one. Then, before you know it, there are 100 versions of the same documents all with different titles.
With the cloud stores all documents 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 to your business discussed above, moving to the cloud isn’t entirely a selfish act. Cloud computing not only uses less physical servers but as you are only using the energy you need, you don’t leave any oversized carbon footprints. According to a study by Microsoft, cloud storage has been found to be between 79-93% more energy-efficient than a traditional on-premise data centre.
Cloud computing has become increasingly popular for business use due to the fact 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.
Serval IT Systems have over a decade of experience with the cloud and can provide businesses like yours with a large 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. Please get in touch for more information.