As a business owner, you look for things to simplify and to make sure your work load is minimal. You wonder how some business owners and company owners maintain their businesses with less staffs. What most companies use is cloud computing for economical savings and less stress.
Now, you may be asking what is cloud computing?
At some point in your life, you have made use with the cloud. If you use a web-based email provider such as Gmail or Hotmail, you are using the cloud. If you’ve ever used Skype video calling or video interfaces like Vimeo or YouTube, you’ve used the cloud.
If you’ve ever backed up data on the Internet rather than an external device, you’ve used the cloud. Now that you have an idea what it is, understanding the definition won’t be a problem.
So, what is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage and computing power, without direct active management by the user. The term is generally used to describe data centers available to many users over the Internet.
Cloud computing is a type of computing that relies on shared computing resources rather than having local servers or personal devices to handle applications.
Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services including servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence over the Internet (“the cloud”) to offer faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale.
You typically pay only for cloud services you use, helping lower your operating costs, run your infrastructure more efficiently and scale as your business needs change.
Even with the definitions, you are yet to be convinced how it is really improving the businesses and companies surrounding you.
Most businesses are embracing the use of cloud computing at unstoppable rates, and the technology has risen as a new paradigm that has allowed technology companies to offer services to businesses and organizations through the cloud or, more plainly, from their own servers.
There are obviously benefits and advantages these business/company owners are getting from this so called “cloud computing” you are yet to know.
The following 14 benefits are the main reasons cloud computing is being used by most companies.
1. Efficiency/Cost Reduction
With the aid of cloud computing, users can get applications to market quickly without worrying about underlying infrastructure costs or maintenance. Cloud computing helps to lower your operating costs, and also helps organizations pace their investments so they avoid big up-front capital expenses and pay monthly as their business scales.
2. Data Security
The attempts to breach the data of any successful organization is becoming common and cloud computing servers are becoming easy targets for the data breach.
The cloud data has provided a security solution that helps in protecting sensitive information and transaction of your business. This helps the data to stay secure against third party or violation of the data transmitted.
3. Flexibility
The flexibility of the cloud has made employees work in organizations more flexible as they can now complete their tasks in and out of the workplace. They can get any and every information they need on the web browser from the comfort of their abode. No restrictions whatsoever!
4. Mobility
Cloud Mobility has made it easier to connect better and reach more people and information easier, faster and even more securely. It is simply amazing! So, if you’re stranded maybe while looking for that piece of information to complete your task, the mobility of the cloud has made it easy for you to communicate, get information and be on the go!
5. Scalability
This is one of the key features and benefits of cloud computing. Scalability enables you to increase or decrease the size or power of the IT solution of your business very easily and as fast as possible.
6. Quality Control
When the output of a business, in terms of quality is poor, it would affect the business very negatively. A cloud-based system ensures all documents are stored in one place and in a single format. Quality control ensures that despite the number of people that open your content, it remains consistent and free of any form of error
7. Automatic Software Updates
All cloud-based applications have been designed to automatically refresh and update themselves instead of waiting for computer specialists to be on ground and keep refreshing every minute.
Even if they are on ground, how many times would they refresh a day? That will be human abuse. These apps update themselves and you do not need to wait as waiting could be very annoying especially if you do not have the time or energy.
8. Easy Manageability
This cloud-based system has been designed to be managed by the service provider. So only little maintenance is needed from specialists. The service provider agreement ensures guaranteed and timely delivery, and maintenance of your business infrastructure.
9. Speed
Speed is another great feature of cloud computing. Within a few seconds, you can get any information you so desire from the comfort of your home. All it takes is just keywords entered into the search button and the search is on.
10. Cloud Analytics
Nothing is better than an information that is well organized and well analyzed. Analysis is a very important part of business as it is the strategic and statistical breakdown of your business operations. Cloud analytics can make most businesses effectively scale the storing, processing, and leveraging of data through insights that reflect changing market conditions.
11. Increased Collaboration
What is the aim of business if you cannot work together with people? Cloud computing gives room for increased working together of people in a business. Some organizations even provide cloud based social platform’s where employees can meet, discuss and know what’s up.
12. Disaster Recovery.
This is like a backup procedure for all information and facts collected. No matter how perfectly built or strong your system is, a single crash can delete all information if it is not backed up. Thus, it is important to back up data so that when a crash happens, within minutes, all information will be restored, and work can start again in earnest.
13. Remote Working
This is a whole lot similar to flexibility. You can be at home and be very useful to your business. It boosts productivity as people love to be working in comfort as long as there is a very stable internet connection.
14. IoT Ready
IOT (Internet of Things) can generate massive amounts of data, and cloud computing provides a pathway for this data to travel across. By allowing a lot of developers to store and access data remotely, developers can access data immediately and work on projects without delay. The IOT (Internet of Things) has also helped developers to remotely store and access data immediately and work without delay.
( Also Read: Top 10 Benefits of Blockchain Technology in Cloud Computing )
In a business or organization, there is always a story to tell about the success. Cloud computing has been seen as the solution to the problem of some businesses which has led to their being successful today. It helps in our day to day life. Using the internet, Skyping, watching videos on YouTube, even backing up documents without the aid of external disk( like hard disk or flash drive). Cloud computing has been taken useful despite the disadvantages.
Conclusively, cloud computing helps in growing a successful and standard business. In short, cloud is fast becoming the new normal. By the end of 2015, it was estimated that 90% of businesses in the United Kingdom would be using at least one cloud service.
Ensuring you and your team know how to use cloud computing to improve your business might seem difficult but it is well worth the effort of learning and implementing. The future is changing and if you want to ensure your business will also change with it, make the switch to the cloud.
