6 Key Benefits of Cloud Computing for Businesses
Cloud computing has had a transformative effect on businesses of all sizes. It has opened up new possibilities for smaller firms and allowed larger ones to be more reactive. Cloud technology is now an integral part of many people’s working lives, even if they don’t realize it.
While many of us use cloud computing, there’s still a knowledge gap around the services available via cloud computing. Here are five ways cloud computing can help your business, from improving efficiency to making you more responsive to change.
It Provides Data Redundancy
Most of us use cloud storage in a personal capacity, whether it’s backing up photos from our phones or storing documents in Google Drive. However, for businesses, a string of notable security breaches have raised concerns. For example, Apple’s iCloud has proven vulnerable to repeated hacking attempts. Plus, recent security breaches to sites such as Facebook and Twitch show that even the biggest providers remain vulnerable.
For many, the result of this reticence is a lack of data redundancy, leaving local data vulnerable to accidental deletion, hardware failure, or other losses. Cloud storage from a managed services provider offers an easy, affordable and secure way to backup your business’ data.
It Allows You To Be More Agile
The IT demands of businesses can be extremely changeable. Fluctuating workloads can create variable bandwidth requirements, with the huge capital investment needed to accommodate rare usage peaks. Meanwhile, new software can demand new infrastructure and skillsets for something that may be temporary. By the time you meet all requirements, you could find yourself lagging behind your competitors.
By taking advantage of cloud computing, you can quickly scale your investment up or down depending on demand. With a managed services provider’s ample expertise and capacity, you can increase bandwidth without investing in your own infrastructure. This allows you to launch services faster, experiment with new technologies, and trial new applications.
It Provides New Insights
On a local network, data is often atomized, with different versions of files spread across multiple workstations. By moving to cloud software solutions, the data you collect and produce is centralized together. This makes it easier to organize and analyze your data and ensures that more is available to analyze.
With each action, transaction, and interaction logged in the Cloud, you’ll have access to a glut of actionable information. Data analytics software can help sift through this data, identifying patterns and trends and highlighting areas for improvement. With little change to your working practices, you can harness otherwise lost information and use it to improve your business practices.
It’s Ideal for Hybrid Work
Modern workplaces are increasingly collaborative spaces. Where once files would be stored locally and passed around, there’s an increasing expectation that they should be available in a centralized location. Rather than creating multiple versions of documents, they should exist in a live state, tracking and merging changes by multiple users.
This is something that is only possible thanks to cloud computing. By making files and documents available within the Cloud, you can access, edit and download them from anywhere. This improves the organization of files and tracking of changes and enables new working patterns. Home workers can access their files remotely and pick up where they left off.
It Can Improve Security
As mentioned previously, there’s a lingering negative perception around data storage in the Cloud. Well-publicized data breaches have made it appear that data is more susceptible to unauthorized access when stored online rather than on your own devices. Yet this is a misapprehension of what cloud computing is and the relative benefits of cloud storage over local storage.
Your local network is generally accessible to remote access through a range of entry points and can often be far less secure when mismanaged than a cloud storage solution. A managed IT services provider offers advanced security options, as well as 24/7 monitoring and management of your cloud storage. This often means data stored in the Cloud is more secure than it is on your network.
It Increases Quality Control
The scattering of data in a decentralized system can have a huge impact on quality. Different people working on different copies of the same documents can lead to all sorts of problems. These range from discerning versions and revisions to completely overwriting new documents with old ones. Also, progress on a document might be unknown to other employees, with files hidden away on individual workstations.
On the cloud, files can be centralized in a single location, with tight version control and a log of revisions. This will provide all employees with clear information about each file, including who had changed it, when it was last changed, and which version or revision it is.
Sota is one of the UK’s leading independent providers of professional IT support in Kent, cloud computing, cyber resilience, connectivity, and unified communications. Having worked with countless businesses over the years, they are experts in their field, ready to advise and offer tailored solutions for each and every company.
