From Microsoft Azure to AWS (Amazon Web Services) or private clouds, such as IBM, the choice of cloud platforms and services available has never been greater. More and more tech companies (or the tech sides of businesses) are moving over to the cloud. This is no surprise as making the move offers significant benefits for businesses.
There are still several common worries and issues that some companies are concerned about regarding cloud services, but these tend to be misconceptions or things that should not be hold any company back from making the move over to the cloud.
Nobody in business ever strays too far from the bottom line. Business leaders need to be consistently making the right decisions that affect the bottom line and enable a company to grow. Staying within budget is obviously crucial to this. This is where the first great benefit of moving to the cloud can be seen.
It’s easy to be focused too much on the upfront cost of software, rather than considering the full cost over time (support, hardware, updates, etc.). An advantage of cloud services is that they enable you to take full advantage of reliability and scale. You will also pay only for the usage you require over time, on a subscription model.
Security is unsurprisingly a key concern and companies are bound to wonder how safe their data will be in the cloud. The truth is that the cloud will not be any less secure than internally managed servers. Actually, it’s more than likely that the infrastructures in the cloud will be even more secure. What’s more, these will be monitored and maintained by highly skilled experts. The likes of Amazon Web Services have highly robust security practices in place.
Perhaps a mark of just how secure cloud services actually are is the fact that the US Federal Government has entrusted the likes of AWS and Microsoft Azure to store highly sensitive data on their clouds.
The reliability of cloud services – alongside the storage capacity on offer – makes the cloud an attractive proposition. You can be safe in the knowledge that your data will always be available and never lost. Typically, they offer flexibility too. Usually, a subscription will not tie any client in for longer than 12 months. Costly up-front and long-term licenses can become a thing of the past.
Finally, the integration that cloud services offer is a major benefit. In short, cloud services open up integration with virtually everything. From online web forms to point-of-sale systems to automatic publishing of content onto social media channels, the cloud allows you to link systems together and save a good deal of time and expense into the bargain.
The opportunities for integration with other services are virtually limitless. Whichever way you turn and wherever you look when it comes to cloud services, it’s hard to find a genuine drawback or disadvantage that moving to the cloud might bring a tech company.
This article was written by Bobby Corbyn, Head of Recruitment at Marcus Donald People.
