near as painful and challenging as it once was. Let’s take a closer look to
better understand what cloud-based solutions could offer your company and employees from these two important perspectives. Let’s start with the bottom line.
Minimizing costs is a key aspect of any business because it inherently boosts profits. Much of the initial backing for cloud computing relates back to this exact concept. Why? Because maintaining data storage centers on sight is a cost that can easily be lowered when migrating to the cloud, not to mention the security of data and redundancies in place.
Smaller businesses often debate the relatively low costs of the few servers they have in their data center; however, if those servers go out, they are out of luck and dealing with disaster recovery. If their data was stored and accessed in the cloud, this potential pitfall is avoided entirely. Not to mention, once you buy a server, regardless of its storage capacity, you’re paying for the entire server. When it comes to a cloud platform, almost all major cloud vendors offer flexibility in their plan pricing for more flexibility such as a pay-as-you-go plan. This not only helps with initial spending but you must also consider it in terms of your quarterly budgets. If you’ve allotted X amount of funds for data management and storage, chances are spending this amount all at once which drastically reduces the funds available for other departments. If you pay as you go or use a subscription-based pricing cloud solution, you’re able to spread out that spending and allocate funds more effectively on an as-needed basis.
Next, consider the impact the cloud environment has on your business’s ability to grow and adapt. I say to grow and adapt because often times when we think of growth, it comes in terms of acquisition of new employees, items, etc. Growth for a company can also mean adaptation.
For example, one of the key aspects of growth in the digital and data-driven
era is in the field of predictive analytics. Cloud-based analytics solutions
are what’s making all of this predictive analysis possible and its findings
often enable a company to grow without actually growing in the physical and traditional sense. Instead, companies adapt their services through cloud-based solutions to optimize project completion and save on overall time and costs to provide their products or services. The last concern that a business often has in relation to cloud migration is security and reliability.
Some years ago, these were hot topics but they have (relatively) cooled down a bit since then.
While it is still advised that you consult with professionals in the field of cloud migration, it is no longer the fear-inspiring process it once was.