We have all been in a situation where we stayed up working late hours on a project– numerous files and documents saved– only to come back to discover the files are now missing. Maybe they were accidentally deleted, your hard drive crashed, or your laptop was stolen. If your business is utilizing cloud-computing for backups, then this situation is an easy stress-free fix. If you are not utilizing cloud backups, your hard work is now potentially lost forever.
Cloud computing is aimed at providing a convenient on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable resources such as: networks, servers, applications, storage, and services that can be quickly provisioned and released with minimal management effort.
Cloud computing has increased in popularity in these past few years and with good reason. Let’s discuss the top 5 reasons your business needs to move to the cloud.
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Cost Savings
Businesses save money by not having to pay for its own corporate data center and the staff and overhead costs that are involved with such a setup. With cloud computing, you never pay for more than what you use and is easily scalable. Also, because cloud computing is a rapid-deployment model, businesses have minimal project start-up costs and predictable ongoing operating expenses. According to SiliconANGLE.com, “82% of companies reported saved money by moving to the cloud”.
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Disaster Recovery
Every business needs a plan for disasters—hurricanes, fires, theft, hardware failure. With cloud computing you have the ideal solution. Cloud products are often housed in redundant, secure data centers. All you need to access your data in the Cloud is an Internet connection. In the event you have to evacuate, this also allows you to continue working on projects from wherever you need to.
In addition, being on the cloud means very little down time in such a situation, providing your clients with the comfort of knowing they are still being taken care of regardless of what is going on.
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Collaboration and Productivity Enhancement
Businesses that utilize cloud computing will see an increase in both of these areas. Cloud computing system mobility boosts staff efficiency through easy collaboration within the team, or teams, wherever they are based. Such collaboration results in up-to-date information that enables rapid and reliable decision making and allows for quick response to ever-changing business conditions and needs.
With the cloud, all files are stored centrally meaning that if you are working on a project with multiple people, you can all work on the same document and the latest version will always be accessible. In many cases, you can collaborate on the same document at the same time.
“80% of cloud adopters saw improvements within 6 months of moving to the cloud”(SiliconANGLE).
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Easy Integration
Cloud services integrate easily with many other services. Cloud solutions tend to use industry standards for data interchange and generally integrate better with different systems than non-cloud based solutions.
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Long-Term Investment
With cloud computing you have a much more predictable monthly and annual budget for IT. Maintenance and upgrades of the cloud computing systems are not the responsibility of your business, but of the cloud provider, thus giving you the ability to keep your focus solely on your product and services.
As a business owner, it is hard to ignore the benefits of moving your data to the cloud. Your business will need to research and make decisions based on a few factors.
These factors are:
- The different cloud computing options available- which one is best for the size and goals of your company.
- Determine if you should fully or partially move to the cloud.
- What is your budget is going to be?
How can NOT being on the cloud affect your business?
- 70% of businesses that experience a major data loss are out of business within one year (DTI/ PricewaterhouseCoopers)
- 94% of companies suffering from a catastrophic data loss do not survive (University of Texas)
- 30% of small businesses will experience a natural disaster (NFIB)
- 10% of small businesses will experience a major data loss as result of human error (NFIB)
Restoring data costs for your business:
According to the National Computer Security Association, without adequate backup it takes:
- 19 days and $17,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost sales/marketing data
- 21 days and $19,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost accounting data
- 42 days and $98,000 to recreate just 20 MB of lost engineering data.
Going all in on the cloud is an economic advantage for many businesses, but it can also prove to be a viable one — helping attract a new demographic of employee or customer, while driving business results. What are you waiting for?
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