Businesses no longer want to be in an endless cycle of purchasing servers every 5 years or so. This business model has an impact on capital, causes disruption and locks businesses into a specific technology for a set period of time. Businesses want the flexibility of knowing that their IT infrastructure can expand and contract with their needs. For these very reasons cloud IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) has grown in popularity. You now don’t have to make longer term commitments nor assign a separate air conditioned server in your office!

What do we mean by the cloud?

Cloud computing means that instead of all the computer hardware and software you’re using sitting on your desktop, or somewhere inside your company’s network, it is provided for you as a service by another company and accessed over the Internet, usually in a completely seamless way.

Exactly where the hardware and software is located and how it all works doesn’t matter to you, the user – it’s just somewhere up in the nebulous “cloud” that the Internet represents.
Most importantly, the service you use is provided by someone else and managed on your behalf. One basic principle of cloud computing is that you no longer need to worry how the service you’re buying is provided: with Web-based services, you simply concentrate on whatever your job is and leave the problem of providing dependable computing to someone else.

Here are 6 ways that cloud computing can help your business:

 

1. Less operational issues

It may sound complicated but there are far less hiccups when it comes to running your business on the cloud rather than managing a local server. Since the company that runs your cloud storage has only one objective – to provide a functional, secure and bug free experience – you’ll experience far less downtime and stress than relying on a traditional server. Your cloud servers are held in a secure data centre. These data centres are air conditioned warehouses monitored by staff 24 hours a day with backup power generation and multiple internet lines should there be a failure. This allows for a 99.99% uptime.

 

2. More affordable

As well as being more reliable, the cloud is also far cheaper in the long run compared with other solutions. If you don’t have to hire a tech team to fix emergency server issues that’s already a saving. Equally a fixed monthly cost for proactive cloud storage and support means you can protect your business from unexpected server bills. Another bonus is that the cloud can scale with you – no more paying for costly server upgrades.

 

3. Requires less upfront investment

The cloud requires drastically less upfront investment than a traditional local server, which is great if you are a fledgling business. Instead you simply pay for what you need per month. The Cloud is elastic, meaning that you can increase or decrease capacity at will without having to make long term commitments in purchasing hardware. It’s not your responsibility to install or configure regular updates and new patches either!

 

4. Makes collaboration and document control far easier

Cloud computing was made for collaboration and file sharing. Cloud storage allows teams to edit files simultaneously in real time, regardless of where they are in the world. Thankfully, gone are the days of thousands of back and forth emails.

As well as being great for collaboration, the cloud allows you to set up automatic permissions for different users and teams. This is really handy for controlling who can see, edit and share different documents, ensuring that you do not have multiple versions of different documents and databases.

 

5. Always available

Ever got to a meeting and realise that you’ve forgotten the USB that holds your presentation files? Even worse, your USB is corrupted and you’ve lost hours of work? You can eliminate these nightmare scenarios simply by moving onto the cloud. Cloud storage is always available and accessible from anywhere in the world, as long as you have access to the internet. Your documents and files are also backed up automatically, for that extra peace of mind.

 

In summary

The advantages of using the cloud for your business far outweighs any disadvantages. Theres definitely a good reason that over 85% of businesses have implemented some sort of cloud solution. At Mansys we’ve got a long history of implementing and managing varied cloud solutions for businesses across Yorkshire. You can learn more about these services by clicking here.