Cloud computing services can be put under three key categories – Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS). Moving to the cloud can bring several benefits for a company – from cost savings and easy scalability to lower overheads, improved efficiency and collaboration, and much more. Yet, businesses are often wary of cloud migration due to the associated risks of such a move. From privacy risks and data loss to internet connectivity, vulnerability to external attack etc., their concerns are many. If you too are afraid of cloud migration, here are the top five reasons why you should move your business to the cloud right away.
- Lower overheads: Instead of spending a lot on setting up a robust infrastructure and hiring in-house personnel for managing it, it’s much more cost-effective to shift to the cloud. The cost of cloud services is based on several factors like the storage space and features you need, the duration for which you need them, and the number of users who would be using them, among others. Thus, you can select the package that best suits your needs and even opt for the pay-as-you-go model to pay for only the services that you use. This way, you can save a lot on storage device costs, server maintenance etc as you’ll get a robust infrastructure without the cost or headache associated with setting them up and maintaining them
- Flexibility: Businesses often have lean periods as well periods when they burst at the seams. Cloud services give you the flexibility to scale up or down your resources, as and when you need to. Thus, you can scale down during your lean periods and scale up during peak seasons to meet customer requirements. Instead of incurring huge costs for keeping additional storage, servers, and licenses hoping you would use them someday in the future, you can save a lot with cloud services as you get the flexibility to order additional resources within a few minutes by paying the extra cost, or let go of unused resources as you no longer need them.
- Easy of access: Cloud migration would give you and your team easy access to all files, documents, and data from anywhere and at any time. In today’s age when most businesses have workforces in diverse regions, cloud services would ensure easy access to information and encourage real-time collaboration between teams located at different geographical regions. For field workers, cloud migration facilitates easy and fast sharing of real-time data and updates with their office colleagues. You may even reduce your business costs further by letting some of your employees work from home, thus decreasing the number of workstations and the overhead costs associated with them. In a way, cloud migration encourages agility and innovation because it helps in speeding up traditional workflows, and persuades teams to think about their jobs in a different way and how they collaborate and drive innovation. Apart from improving your employees’ productivity, cloud services even enable you to monitor your business operations effectively as you’ll simply need internet access to track the progress of various operations in real-time.
- Redundancy and security: When you have your own in-house server, a solitary point of failure can result in a disaster that’s capable of bringing the entire infrastructure down. You can steer clear of such headache with cloud migration as the cloud functions on the principle of integrated redundancy. This means in case one element breaks down, another is capable of replacing it instantaneously. Additionally, there’s an extremely efficient backup system in cloud services that prevents any data loss. You’ll also get several security capabilities offered by the cloud providers such as authentication, encryption, software protection against hackers, security hardware, disaster recovery etc.
- Green technology: Cloud services need to be extremely efficient to survive. No wonder they optimize the number of resources that are necessary for the business. Even the huge data centers of cloud providers are streamlined to optimize efficiency. All these steps help you to bring down your carbon footprints. Thus, you can say the decision to move your business to the cloud would mean showing a little love for Mother Earth too.
Cloud migration has its fair share of problems as well. From being concerned about storing and retrieving extremely sensitive data to not being legally able to deploy proprietary software, businesses still have to think about a few risks and drawbacks. Yet, cloud migration brings several benefits, which makes the transition worth it. With cloud services, you can make your business leap farther than you could have ever done otherwise. Apart from helping you save effort, time, and money, cloud migration also gives productivity a big boost and facilitates the formation of new strategies that would take your business to greater heights.