In recent times, we have witnessed the adoption of cloud computing by several companies across varying industries. Cloud computing is rendering traditional IT solutions redundant. It is time to embrace the age of ‘the cloud’ to ensure better business automation for enhanced business performance, development, and growth, irrespective of the scale of your business.
If your business is already using services like Dropbox and Google Drive to store files or using Microsoft Teams to facilitate communication then you are already using some form of cloud computing.
What is cloud computing?
According to IBM, “cloud computing is on-demand access, via the internet, to computing resources—applications, servers (physical servers and virtual servers), data storage, development tools, networking capabilities, and more—hosted at a remote data center managed by a cloud services provider (or CSP).”
In its simplicity, cloud computing refers to storing and accessing data and programs over the internet instead of your computer’s hard drive.
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Uses of the cloud
Cloud computing is a broad term for different types of cloud services, including:
Cloud storage & backup: store and back up your files for easy and regular access. Files can also be shared and synced across devices. Cloud backup has been designed to serve as a failsafe solution if your business happens to experience a data breach or loss or server crash.
Software as a Service (SaaS): This is where a business subscribes to an application it accesses over the internet such as Office 365, Google Apps, and Salesforce.
Cloud hosting: this is centered on facilitating multiple types of information sharing, such as email services, application hosting, and web-based phone systems.
The types of cloud services businesses use
Software as a Service (SaaS): This is where a business subscribes to an application it accesses over the internet such as Office 365, Google Apps, and Salesforce.
Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS): This is where a business can create its applications for use by every staff/worker in the company.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): This is where companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google provide a backbone that can be “rented out” by other companies. Just as Netflix is a customer of the cloud services at Amazon.
Benefits of the cloud to your business
Cloud computing offers enormous access to businesses particularly in the area of boosting productivity to ensure overall growth.
Cost efficiency: Cloud computing can help your business reduce the costs required to purchase expensive hardware for storing and sharing data. Your company can use a pay-as-you-go or a subscription model which can help reduce operational and infrastructural costs. Many small and medium-sized enterprises are recognizing the ease in setting up and managing a cloud infrastructure.
Effective collaboration: With cloud computing, the limitations in communication are removed. Employees working from different parts of the world or home can access the same document and data without excuses. This enhances collaboration across employees and streamlines processes, which means more work gets done in less time.
Increased data protection/security: Cloud computing ensures all your companies data or information are secured. In the eventuality, your computer gets stolen or your storage devices get destroyed, your data/information is still secured and can be accessed with another device.
Easily scalable: This is one major merit of cloud computing. Cloud computing has been designed to be scaled to meet a business changing IT needs. As a company grows, so does the need for more storage capacity and bandwidth to cope with increasing traffic to the website. Thus, cloud computing can help your business scale up or down to ensure optimum performance. Cloud computing also helps to improve your website speed and minimize downtime.
Easy, free, and timely updates: Most cloud service providers offer regular system updates and maintenance to ensure your IT requirements are consistently met since the servers are off-premises. This frees up the time and money that businesses spend doing this in-house.
Business continuity: With reliable disaster recovery and backup solutions, cloud computing ensures your business stays in business. Being able to access your data again quickly after a failure or disaster ensures your business continues to operate as scheduled.
Enhanced engagement with customers: Having a strong customer support strategy is key to the success of a company, after all, it is the customer that pays a company for the product(s) or service(s) it renders. The cloud allows for the effective creation of, customer-oriented apps, adding a touch of personalization to customers’ app experiences. The company’s marketing or IT staff can then access information regarding a customer’s in-app experience and offer timely and relevant feedback and support.
