We have all heard this term over and over again, but what does “the cloud” really mean? If you are technologically challenged as a friend of mine calls herself, then saying that cloud computing is helping businesses is something alien or something that you can’t exactly pin point how is it that possible. Well, the possibilities are endless nowadays, literally if you can imagine something better; technology can make it a reality. Business applications are moving to the cloud, the shift from traditional software models to the internet has steadily gained momentum over the last decade. Here are the benefits to being part of the cloud movement. After reading the benefits you will most probably decide that the shift is not just right for you but necessary.
- Saving Downtime Costs
If your traditional business apps are down then you will not be able to operate, and if your company can’t operate at its optimal capacity, you will end up wasting a lot of time and money. But if you rely on a cloud computing technology, which putting it plain and simple, your systems exist on the internet, with all the safety nets and precautions required for you to have an up time of 99.99%. No more after hours emergencies, with a 24/7 support you won’t even notice there was an emergency.
- Protecting Your Information
One of the worst things that could happen to a business is to lose information, not only your internal information but your customers information, this can permanently ruin your reputation as well as the relationship of trust that you worked so hard to achieve, after all, a business should be able to protect their clients data, which cloud storage can help you protect without breaking the bank, with a robust infrastructure to back you up, you will never lose any important information.
- Mobility
By having your data in the cloud, your information will travel along with you wherever you are. No matter what day of the week it is or what time of day, your information will always be available to you, the more applications you have running in the cloud, the more efficient you become. As technology evolves we now expect that information that we care about to be pushed to us in real time. Applications are being developed in that direction as well, keeping up with your work has never been easier.
- True Collaboration
No matter where your employees or team mates are, cloud computing will help you get connected and work together in a private space, businesses are running all kinds of apps in the cloud, sharing ideas, worksheets even your accounting system can be online, CRM (Customer Relationship Manager), HR and so much more, as I mentioned before, you just have to imagine the possibilities and most probably there is already a solution waiting for you in the cloud. Business applications are becoming similar to consumer applications such as Facebook or twitter.
- Reduce costs
It seems that reducing costs using technology is the common phrase nowadays, with traditional businesses this would have never been said when referring to their IT department with applications running on site on very expensive and complicated hardware and a complete fleet of IT support, and if the company had many locations, the costs of implementation, collaboration and development would go through the roof. Now that is a thing of the past, applications are being run on the internet. And the best of all is that cloud based apps can be up and running in days or weeks and they cost less. With a cloud app you just open a browser, log in, customize your app to your preferences and start using it.
In Conclusion:
As cloud computing grows in popularity, many companies are switching their non-cloud products and services as “cloud computing”, so be careful and always dig in deeper to evaluate the cloud offerings and keep in mind that if you have to buy and manage software and hardware, what they are offering isn’t really cloud computing but a fake branding.
