The ‘cloud’ can seem mysterious and confusing to business owners who haven’t used it much before. In this situation, it’s often beneficial to play around with it via a personal account to get comfortable first. Using a personal cloud storage solution like Dropbox to sync files between a home PC and a Dropbox storage area is one way to do so.
Refocusing on the larger story, should your company move their IT to the cloud? Let’s see why it might make sense to do so.
Scalable Infrastructure
Infrastructure costs scale with the business, but not necessarily with each new employee. Instead, companies are required to invest upfront for what they expect to require in the coming months and years. When growth slows or other market events change the needs, different infrastructure may be required to handle that.
By moving to the cloud, the infrastructure is often at the cloud level, not the local level. Being already in place, it can scale as data and users require it to, rather than paying the expense early and not necessarily getting the most use out of it.
Managed Cloud Services
Subscription plans with managed cloud services allow companies to keep the cost of cloud usage down. In some cases, companies can provide a completely virtualized environment from their data centers to support Microsoft 365, VMware, and other software tools to let employees work directly. When these are in place, the office doesn’t necessarily need to keep a server room, cooling apparatus, and more. This can all be accomplished in the cloud.
Security is Better
Maintaining security across an entire company network is a job in itself. When going to the cloud, this is largely removed because a managed cloud solution includes security within its design. Because data and privacy are paramount, secure cloud services are managed carefully to ensure nothing is missed.
File security is also improved because it becomes easier to control access with centralized file storage. Managing access privileges and other considerations requires less involvement by the company’s IT staff too.
Enhanced Collaboration
With office workers, and now remote workers too, it’s likely that teams are split up from each other. By using the cloud, they can reconnect successfully, access the necessary documents, and complete their work seamlessly. Rather than having the problem that certain files are stored on the desktop PC at work, it’s all accessible in one place, from anywhere.
Employees can more easily share file access with colleagues and collaborate using shared workspaces. Also, they have other options such as SaaS and video conferences to communicate more effectively too.
Disaster Recovery Is Easier to Manage
Companies that struggle to create a workable disaster recovery plan for their computing teams can use the cloud to make their life simpler. Files are already backed up, so the loss of a laptop or the flooding of the office doesn’t need to shut the company down for good. Employees can take to their laptops to access all the necessary project files from the cloud and work from home until the office is fixed up.
Whether they want to enable better collaboration, protect from a potential IT disaster, or avoid the cost of uncertain scaling requirements, companies can reap multiple benefits when moving to the cloud.