Benefits of Cloud Computing for Business
Cloud computing is an emerging technology trend wherein data is stored, managed and processed on a network of servers hosted remotely on the internet. Its popularity has been on the rise in recent times because of the numerous benefits it offers to businesses, big or small. The most significant of these are:
1. Money Saver
Who doesn’t want an option that cuts down your costs? One of the primary benefits of Cloud Computing is that the user can work without any installation of hardware as cloud service providers offer everything within their server. This translates to savings in the form of hardware costs as well as costs to maintain a data centre. Further, operating costs in security, insurance, air conditioning, etc. are all also avoided by shifting to the Cloud.
2. Flexible & Scalable
Having your own data centre requires huge upfront costs. It also requires an organisation to accurately predict their warehousing requirements from time to time. These predictions may not always be correct and could result in wastage of resources or a shortage of storage space. On the other hand, moving to the Cloud eliminates all this. You can pay for the extent of storage space that you need and as demand arises, one can scale up instantly. This enables organizations to be agile, scale rapidly, and effectively manage resources.
3. Competitive Advantage
Cloud computing has virtually zero deployment time which enables organizations to upload critical applications online instantly. As such, organizations have a competitive edge over their competitors due to services like the availability of various applications online. However, their competitors who haven’t adopted cloud services remain negated from such benefits and lag in the output results. This also provides a level playing field for smaller companies to compete against larger ones with greater in-house capacity without the need to invest heavily in their own data centres.
4. Higher Availability
Business tasks are reliant on computer applications, and in this scenario, any downtime situations can be particularly detrimental to any organization’s growth. Server failure can bring operations to a complete standstill resulting in significant losses. Cloud hosting eliminates such events as the cloud environment is engineered for a guaranteed 100% uptime. As all works are accomplished via virtual machines in a cloud network, so during any negative event, it can be easily transferred to one of the clustered servers. This key feature of cloud service, the clustered server, effectively reduces downtime or outages by making available another server to the users immediately. Besides, the cloud’s hyper-converged design helps shield everything from situations like hard disk failure, entire server failure, etc.
5. Super agility in performance
To offer better services and remain in the lead in this competitive market landscape, cloud service providers continually update their respective technologies. It helps them in enhancing cloud computing features like high-performance servers through the help of robust technologies such as CPUs and agile SSD drives. Additionally, cloud service providers use load balancing which helps to route their customer requests with maximum speed and high capacity utilization in the process. As a result, during busy server conditions, this feature helps to distribute the extra load which doesn’t hinder the overall performance of the server. Yet with so many distributed servers, cloud technology keeps optimization and consistency in performance as the main focus.
6. Quicker running of new apps
It has been one of the main platforms that successfully reduced the time required to run new software applications without any hindrance. As a result, now, companies can direct these saved time in building some new software and other new products for better business. All you need to do is sign-up on the cloud and you are good to use most of the cloud-based applications. At minimal charges for better performance, businesses can run smoothly owing to the greater advantageous features of Cloud. One of the main core benefits is that migrating to cloud network offers you to explore novel technology-based applications like AI, Machine Learning, etc. within a few hours after you sign-up.
7. Increased security
The most interesting of all features is that you can enjoy greater security options by switching over to the Cloud infrastructure. Protection from hacking, infection, data theft, etc. are common in a cloud setting. This is possible since cloud service providers comply with strict security rules and regulations in order to protect the privacy of their clients by offering security to their data. Some of the security features available in a cloud network -intrusion prevention system, in-flow virus protection,etc.- effectively detect and remove threats before they can cause any trouble to the users’ server. With Virtual Private Network (VPN), you can easily extend your office environment to the cloud network and experience secured service.
8. More flexible working environment
With cloud computing, employees experience flexibility in their work. This is primarily because the cloud environment is internet-based, staff can easily access data from anywhere which promotes work facility even outside their workplace. As a result, this brings in a culture of a flexible working environment that is suitable both for employers and employees. Sice, this approach helps in cutting down expenditure by reducing extra office space, many organizations have gradually adopted this procedure by allowing their staff to the work-from-home facility and hot-desk system when they physically work in the office. The new workspace transformation with ‘bring your own device’ (BYOD) policy is also assisted with office’s cloud infrastructure by using logical access authentication protocol that enables security.
9. Environmentally friendly
Personal data centres required to power the server, keep them cool and also consumes a lot of space. These are both uneconomical and also increases the carbon footprint of any particular business organization. But by moving on to cloud infrastructure eliminates all these problems and gives an environmentally-friendly solution.
10. The future is accessible with Cloud
Data is the new oil!! — as the famous quote signifies, as the digital revolution is stretching its footprint, data is growing enormously. The advent of the Internet of Things has brought with itself scope for larger data collection since businesses are expanding and collecting more amounts of data — the big data. So it is necessary for storing and processing such huge quantity of data in the future. As such, cloud computing provides to its user options of easy deployment of software applications that is helpful for continuing the business data processing.
Therefore, cloud hosting provides many benefits to businesses today and will also be of the utmost benefit in the near future. It’s cost-effective, highly reliable, scalable, flexible, agile and secure.
