We recently started a series of articles on cloud services. In the first one, we discussed the main characteristics and uses of the cloud, and now we would like to talk about the benefits your business can enjoy when migrating to the cloud.
The real advantage to using a cloud service is that there is an enormous potential to exploit. The decision to move to the cloud is primarily a business strategy, not an IT strategy. Consequently, you must be aware of the benefits of a cloud solution on the business side, so you can strategically consider and obtain them. There are numerous IT and business strategic benefits, and the results of a KPMG survey below show what clients and their management consider to be the three most important.
Enabling enterprises to be more agile and responsive is the benefit cited more than any other - this and the “runner-up” (faster development and innovation) both relate to flexibility. Agility also plays an important role in budgeting, while the third benefit shown in the graph is self-explanatory. Flexibility and cost advantage, however, are only two advantages a cloud service offers. What follows is a detailed analysis of those and many other benefits that shows how cloud computing can cover all your needs and allow you to concentrate on the core functionality of your applications.
Flexibility
Compared to on-premise solutions, the cloud offers greater flexibility with scalability, i.e. you can add or remove resources as needed. This increased freedom can have a huge impact on the overall efficiency of your business. You can respond quickly to a changing business environment and also recover just as quickly from a failed business solution or following some adverse market trends.
The flexibility of service continuity takes on a new meaning in the cloud. In an on-premise environment, depending on the degree of degradation, you may need to have full-fledged systems on standby for a potential disaster, and the cost of this is often the same as that of live systems. In the cloud, the pay-as-you-go approach applies in such situations too: you only have to pay in case there is a disaster and you have moved your computers to the cloud. As a result, the efficiency of disaster recovery solutions is greatly increased, which guarantees much better business continuity.
Cost advantage
Many organizations are concerned about the initial cost of implementing a cloud-based operation, but as they weigh the pros and cons of cloud adoption, they will find that the return on investment, relative to costs, is substantial.
Once the move to the cloud is made, easy access to corporate data saves time and money when starting projects. For those who fear that they will end up paying for services they don't need or didn't want, the majority of cloud computing services are a clear benefit because of the pay-as-you-go model. This means that if you don't take advantage of the cloud, you don't have to pay for it. This approach also applies to general computing, storage and data transfer capacities needed to serve customers. Taken together, these factors result in lower costs and higher returns.
Security
The security concerns businesses have when adopting cloud computing solutions are justified. After all, if files, programs and other data are not kept on premises, how do you know they are protected? And if you can access data remotely, what can stop a cybercriminal from doing the same?
However, it is the cloud service provider's job to carefully monitor security, and it can do so much more efficiently than a traditional in-house system where the organization’s effort must be devoted to a whole host of IT issues, security being just one of them. Even though external threats must not be underestimated, statistics show that in-house data leaks are atop the list of security risks, even if very few companies openly acknowledge them, whether they be due to error and ignorance or actual data theft. In any event, it is safer to store sensitive information remotely and have it secured by a company that does not know the content and the value of the data, or the possible correlation between pieces of the data.
Cloud service providers ensure the security of their infrastructure and compliance with various industry standards by means of certificates that must be renewed regularly. These certificates cover the entire IaaS, PaaS product and service portfolio of service providers, offering a degree of verification that is not realistically possible for a customer using an individual on-premise system, due to the lack of expertise required, not to mention the significant cost of audits.
Efficient use of information/data
Many cloud storage solutions offer integrated cloud analytics. By building on the data stored in the cloud, it is easy to create an analytics mechanism to analyze business process data at an organizational level. The information gained can be used to improve efficiency and create action plans to achieve organizational goals. For example, the wealth of data from smart devices or IoT devices can be stored economically in the cloud. It can then be easily analyzed with the help of the various analytics tools that cloud service providers offer for preparing or making business decisions.
Consistent data management
In a cloud-based system, all documents can be stored in one place and in one format. If everyone has access to the same information, you can maintain data consistency, avoid human errors and, of course, keep a record of any corrections or updates. Conversely, managing information in silos can result in workers accidentally saving different versions of documents, leading to confused and diluted data.
Recovery from an outage or disaster
In today's business environment, even a small amount of downtime can have a significant negative impact. Downtime in services can lead to loss of productivity, revenue, and brand reputation. While it is not possible to prevent or predict outages or disasters that could potentially harm your organization, cloud-based services provide redundancy and rapid data recovery in the event of such emergencies.
Data loss prevention
Computers can fail for many reasons, from virus infections to aging or simple user error. Local hardware failure is more common than you might think, and can result in data loss.
If you are not using cloud computing, you run the risk of not having a complete backup solution for your important data and, consequently, of losing it.
Automatic updates
With a cloud-based platform, applications update themselves automatically, rather than leaving the operations area to perform the organization-wide update. This saves valuable IT staff time and, as a result, money for the company.
All the benefits discussed above show that implementing a cloud solution gives you more value for less cost and effort. However, it also brings a number of challenges that need to be understood and managed. How you can do that will be the subject of our next article.
