Cloud services are the delivery of computing resources on demand. Those resources include software, hardware, networking, databases, and storage. Moving to the cloud allows companies of all sizes to be more agile and innovate faster. This article will explore 5 reasons why companies should be using cloud services.
Table of Contents
1. Cost-Effectiveness
Cost control is a primary motivation for organizations to transition to the cloud. With the cloud, you eliminate much of the overhead associated with software and hardware. The cloud provider takes on that burden but can share those resources with its many clients. Your costs are often fixed, and you can easily plan for them. When you need more resources, you know exactly how much it will cost to add them. You also eliminate the need to upgrade your hardware over time. How and when the provider upgrades equipment is not your concern as long as the quality of service remains high.
2. Cybersecurity
The major service providers in this field are enterprise-level organizations. They employ stringent security measures. You can also expect compliance with data protection and other industry standards. One of the concerns a business may have is transferring its sensitive data to the cloud. That said, major cloud service providers invest substantial resources into advanced security protocols and compliance. Be mindful that they must meet the needs of healthcare organizations, defense companies, government agencies, and so forth.
3. Scalability
One of the most challenging aspects of maintaining your own IT infrastructure is remaining scalable while keeping costs in check. This is much easier with the cloud as cloud computing is inherently scalable. It’s a core aspect of the design. If you need to add more storage space or processing power, it often takes just minutes with a phone call or even no human interaction at all. In this discussion, the industry often focuses on scaling up, but scaling down is a factor as well. What if a project did not unfold as successfully as expected? You can scale it down to decrease costs and make it more profitable.
4. Innovation
Innovation is an essential component of business growth. Using legacy technologies has hindered many small- to medium-sized companies. It makes it difficult to experiment with new ideas, and even when those new solutions are successful, it’s challenging to implement them. Consider the Internet of Things (IoT) space. The speed of product development in that field is so reliant on the cloud that those companies could never go back to how it was before.
5. Multiple Service Offerings
Cloud computing makes it much easier to expose resources to different groups of people, including customers, employees, and vendors. Most cloud providers offer four core deployment models: public, private, hybrid, and community. You can also mix and match the different cloud service models, such as software, platform, and infrastructure as a service.
The cloud isn’t a new concept. It can trace its origins all the way back to the 1960s. The cloud has certainly evolved a lot since then and will continue to do so to meet the needs of modern business.