10 Reasons Why Cloud Computing is Important for Businesses
Flexibility
Cloud-based services are ideal for businesses with growing or fluctuating bandwidth demands. If your needs increase, it’s easy to scale up your cloud capacity, drawing on the service’s remote servers. Likewise, if you need to scale down again, the flexibility is baked into the service. This level of agility can give businesses using cloud computing a real advantage over competitors.
Low-Cost Disaster Recovery
Businesses of all sizes should invest in robust disaster recovery, but for smaller businesses that lack the required cash and expertise, this is often more of an ideal than the reality. Cloud computing is now helping more organizations buck that trend.
Let the Cloud Update Your Software
The beauty of cloud computing is that the servers are off premise, out of sight and out of your hair. Suppliers take care of them for you and roll out regular software updates—including security updates—so you don’t have to worry about wasting time maintaining the system yourself. This leaves you free to focus on the things that matter, like growing your business.
Capital-Expenditure Free (Opex vs Capex)
Cloud computing cuts out the high cost of hardware. You simply pay as you go and enjoy a subscription-based model that’s kind to your cash flow. Add to that the ease of setup and management, and suddenly your scary, hairy IT project looks a lot friendlier. It’s never been easier to take the first step to cloud adoption.
Increased Collaboration
When your teams can access, edit, and share documents anytime, from anywhere, they’re able to do more together and do it better. Cloud-based workflow and file-sharing apps help them make updates in real time and give them full visibility into their collaborations.
Work from Anywhere
With cloud computing, if you’ve got an internet connection, you can be at work. And with most serious cloud services offering mobile apps, you’re not restricted by which device you have on hand.
Document Control
The more employees and partners collaborate on documents, the greater the need for watertight document control. Before the cloud, workers had to send files back and forth as email attachments to be worked on by one user at a time. Sooner or later—usually sooner—you end up with a mess of conflicting file content, formats, and titles. And as even the smallest companies become more global, the scope for complication rises. According to one study, “73% of knowledge workers collaborate with people in different time zones and regions at least monthly.” When you make the move to cloud computing, all files are stored centrally and everyone sees one version. Greater visibility means improved collaboration, which ultimately means better work and a healthier bottom line. If you’re still relying on the old way, it could be time to try something a little more streamlined.
Security
Lost laptops are a billion-dollar business problem. Potentially greater than the loss of an expensive piece of kit is the loss of the sensitive data inside it. Cloud computing gives you greater security when this happens. Because your data is stored in the cloud, you can access it no matter what happens to your machine. You can even remotely wipe data from lost laptops so it doesn’t get into the wrong hands.
Competitiveness
Wish there was a simple step you could take to become more competitive? Moving to the cloud gives everyone access to enterprise-class technology. It also allows smaller businesses to act faster than big, established competitors. Pay-as-you-go service and cloud business applications mean small outfits can run with the big boys and disrupt the market, all while remaining lean and nimble.
Environmentally Friendly
While the above points spell out the benefits of cloud computing for your business, moving to the cloud isn’t an entirely selfish act. The environment gets a little love, too. When your cloud needs fluctuate, your server capacity scales up and down to fit. You only use the energy you need, and you don’t leave oversized carbon footprints.