Should I Move To The Cloud? Find Out The Top Reasons You Should

Should I move to the Cloud?

We get asked should I move to the Cloud all the time. The term “Cloud” has become a top talking point these days.

Companies, tech sites, and applications both screaming out as “in the Cloud”.

With that said should you also be in the Cloud?

We like to think so, the Cloud should not just be about a buzzword,

every business application is touting the buzzword “Cloud” but many people are asking Should I use Cloud Storage?

We believe the answer is Yes!

Cloud Brings Collaboration

Believe it or not, we often have to highlight the major potential that the cloud gives companies to collaborate, sharing documents makes your business so much more efficient.

You can collaborate on documents around the world and in real-time which will save in costs and increase productivity across your business.

Cost Savings

Remove the requirements for housing an in-house server room running all the server equipment and air conditioning required to keep it cool,

it can save considerable expenses.

You also have to consider the need for battery backup units (UPC) for coping with short-term power loss, consider not having that and risking potential data loss from a hard power off.

Also consider the equipment required to secure the data as well, by having a server in place an adequate firewall is required and that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Disaster Recovery

Keeping data backups on-site sitting in the office can be dangerous, in a worst-case scenario where the building goes down with a fire or is flooded can you guarantee the safety of your backups?

If you’re reading this thinking you take your backup offsite so nothing to worry about?

Have you actually tested your backups to make sure they can just be restored?

A Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) needs to be in place and tested to know how long your business can survive without access to essential systems, E-mail, sales and accounts data or any other business information?

By placing the data in the Cloud in the event of a major system failure or fire damaging your premises you can still access your data.

With data in the Cloud, you can spin up a Virtual Machine in seconds even at a local coffee shop, and carry on in the business, take a look at our Disaster Recovery article for further information.

Increased Flexibility

With the increased uptake of the “Bring Your Own Device” philosophy being able to work from any device,

anywhere in the world and at any time of the day is becoming increasingly popular.

The days of staring at the same four walls are limited.

Cloud applications allow your business to increase productivity and allow your employees to work faster than ever.

Integrations

Cloud applications allow you to integrate your applications with many of the popular apps out there such as CRM and accounting software.

Many of the software applications allow an API to hook into and share data securely.

Along with GDPR protecting customer data is imperative and the Cloud makes being compliant easier through collaborations with other companies and other security features that offer too much detail for this blog.

Public Or Private?

By definition of Cloud, you could consider it all private as there is security in place making sure the cloud technologies you use are secure.

Defining a public cloud, however, comes down to services available such as Microsoft Office 365, Google Storage, Dropbox, or iCloud.

All these services are secured in remote Datacenters that we call the Cloud.

Businesses can and do have a private server running anything from payroll to applications or web services.

In a cloud-focused future, you can run the majority of your business from the cloud.

Our first business was a Cloud-based solution that booted a dumb terminal (machine without the Operating System) to a cloud version of Windows, even in early Internet life this was popular until the demand outgrew a simple service.

Now the same services are offered by the likes of Citrix and they are very popular services for Remote Workers. Moving to the cloud is the best option rather than maintaining onsite servers and also the costs of running all the equipment.

Redundancy

A traditional way of operating business storage would be to have a RAID system with a tape backup or another form of a local backup solution, although this setup works it does not help to make sure your data is available all the time.

The cost to build such an onsite solution would be astronomical these days. Cloud services have been built to make sure redundancy is never something you have to worry about.

Typically big players will ensure data availability 99.9% of the time. Consider if an onsite failure happened, both the cost to replace the equipment and also the man-hours per hour to correct a major failure? With Cloud services, we can literally have your whole data available again within minutes.

Scale Your Business

A business that is not operating in the Cloud would have to buy the equipment they needed to start up, however what about future growth?

Yes, you can do a forecast and the calculations based on projections on where you expect to grow but what if you get it wrong?

Making an investment in equipment and even picking an office space with the correct number of available desks can be a tough project and will often result in further big expenses down the line.

With a cloud-focused business, you can scale as you grow, with only a few employees at the moment? No problem your Cloud Solution can be based on your requirements, having an under-utilised server, therefore, wasting potentially thousands.

Our solutions are built for growth and a new instance can be provisioned in minutes taking away the stress of having to budget years in advance, can you say the same about your business?