One of the most important business benefits of cloud-based services is the significant savings they offer compared with the cost of buying and maintaining your own physical equipment. And services are typically pay-as-you-go, so you only need to budget for what you use.
Switching to the cloud can deliver other cost savings too. As you will need less room for physical hardware, you could consider downsizing your office space. And the lower electricity needs of cloud applications and storage in comparison with the equivalent on-site hardware could mean a considerable reduction in energy consumption as well.
2. Greater flexibility
In a time when many businesses have shifted whole teams from office working to home working at short notice, the option to access your data and software via the cloud has been hugely valuable.
Businesses that were tied to office-based hard drives and servers will have found the transition to remote working far more difficult than those using cloud architecture, where all you need is an internet connection to gain access to your systems from any location, at any time.
As we slowly make our way back into the office, hybrid working looks set to become the norm for many. The need to work across different locations from laptops and tablets rather than static desktop computers will be increasingly common.
3. Ongoing business continuity
One of the long-standing advantages of cloud architecture has been the ability to back up large amounts of data cheaply. This offers significant advantages over costly, physical disaster-recovery sites when considering your business continuity needs.
Holding data onsite puts it at risk of physical hazards like theft, fire and flood. And of course, disasters do not always affect the whole business. If you hold information on your hard drive, malfunction can lead to the permanent loss of that data.
By storing data in the cloud, you can access it anywhere, even if you cannot be in your usual place of work or at your normal computer. As we have learnt from the pandemic, you cannot predict every crisis that may befall your business, but using the cloud can at least ensure you maintain access to your systems, helping you stay productive in difficult situations and protecting your revenue and your reputation.
Under their service-level agreements, the major cloud service providers generally guarantee availability at least 99.9 per cent of the time, otherwise they have to give you back some of your monthly fees. So it is in their interests to ensure reliability.
4. Improved security
Your business continuity is also reliant on the security of your data. As well as physical risks, storing data on-premises could leave it vulnerable to cyberattack.
