It seems like every business is enthusiastically focused on cloud computing. It’s easy to get excited with the cloud, especially since all the hype seems to be completely justified. Whether you call it efficiency or doing more with less, moving to the cloud just makes good business sense. Why? Because it allows you to focus on what’s really important: your business.
Cloud can give a business the flexibility it never had before to respond quickly to opportunities and innovate, deploy new applications and quickly scale process to meet growing customer demand.
At the same time, it can reduce the cost of hardware, maintenance and IT staffing. These are just some of the reasons why so many businesses have already adopted cloud computing.
1. Fully utilised hardware
Cloud computing is practical. It allows for high utilisation and smoothing of the sometimes inevitable peaks and troughs in demand. Cloud providers have data centres which are able to optimise service levels across their clients, meaning that when you need more you get more and when you don’t, you don’t. With no wasted capacity, this means lower costs for everyone.
2. Reduced power usage
Cloud computing is efficient as it uses less electricity. Better and smarter hardware utilisation means more efficient power use. When you’re running your own data centre, you’re never really using 100 per cent of your server’s capacity, which means they’re wasting energy. This problem is solved by moving to the cloud and the knock on effect tends to be cost savings.
3. Less maintenance
Since you’ll no longer need to maintain several servers, you won’t need to dedicate as many resources to the task of keeping them running. This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll need to fire your entire maintenance staff, but you can use them for more pressing issues and in areas that make more money for your business.
4. Zero capital costs
Running your own servers means you need to cover up-front capital costs. When using the cloud, financing that capital investment is no longer your concern as it becomes your cloud provider’s responsibility.
5. Resilience without redundancy
When you move to the cloud, you no longer have to buy more hardware than you need, just in case something bad happens. Having spare hardware just lying idle is a costly way to maximise uptime. With cloud computing, you can rest assured as cloud providers will mirror your business data and applications across at least two servers. This is yet another way to benefit from the cloud’s economies of scale.
Bonus: go green!
You don’t have to be a global warming supporter to want to go green. Not only do customers appreciate green companies but you’ll also do some good by choosing to emit less CO2 and saving energy (and money) at the same time.
With lower infrastructure cost, greater flexibility and lower operations overhead, you can’t possibly say no to cloud computing. And with all the control a business can get in the cloud, there’s no reason to fear it anymore.
Moving your business to the cloud can help you stay ahead of the completion. Just make sure you choose a reliable cloud provider that takes security as seriously as you do.
About the Author: This is a guest post by Alex Gavril, part of the 123-reg.co.uk blog team. As well as providing cloud server hosting, the company is the UK’s biggest domain name registrar.
License: Image author owned
