10 Quick Wins for Your Company Through Cloud Computing

Cloud computing brings in a lot of benefits from small, medium to large companies. Cloud providers are also innovating on how the cloud could be utilized further.  In this article, we will discuss 10 quick wins that the cloud gives a company.

1. Automation of Infrastructure

Gone are the days when the only requisite to build a great system is to launch big servers expensively and manually configure them. Now, cloud computing offers efficiency that makes automation of infrastructure possible. Installation of patches and packages at the application level can be done with the use of cloud management tools.

2. Easy Maintenance

The cloud provides ways for consistent and repeatable results in launching servers even for a large data center client environment. Thus easy maintenance is seen as one of the greatest benefits of cloud computing, as cloud providers are not managing servers but systems which are monitored in one unified interface.

3. Automatic Alerts

When servers are deployed in the cloud, cloud providers are enabled to monitor them with a dashboard. They can be notified with automatic alerts to find metrics on the system capacity, networking and other computing metrics to update utilization accordingly. Graphs at both the deployment and server level can be viewed. This is for them to maintain good performance of their service and if possible note changes on the plan and rate with clients.

4. Accessibility

Gone are the days when all your files are stored inside your local hard drives, diskettes, CDs and other storage devices. With the cloud, you can have convenient accessibility to your data by connecting to the Internet and logging on to your cloud environment.

5. Disaster Recovery Solution

Businesses should have disaster recovery plans for business continuity in times of emergencies. Through the cloud, companies can pay cloud vendors and get a remote server where they back up and/or store their important documents. When employees can’t go to their physical offices, they can still work from their homes by secure access to files and applications.

6. Prevent Data Loss

Similar to the previous point, the cloud can be used as part of a business’ contingency plan. Data stored in physical drives and papers filed in cabinets may be lost and misplaced or completed deleted. This requires the staff to spend more time searching and retrieving for the loss. The cloud solves this by backing up all data onto the online servers.

7. Online Collaboration

Especially when groups of the workforce are apart from one another and there is no effective tool used for communication, the cloud can improve collaboration between teams. Files can be made with efficient approval and review process and there is no need to send files individually.

8. Green Ethics

Less paper, reduction of heavy machines and materials would equate to green living and green business ethics. This is one of the aims of many businesses today. The cloud as a storage solution makes this achievable, as documents will be readily available to be viewed using several mobile devices as well such as tablets and smartphones. Cloud computing is actually considered as green computing.

9. Lower Learning Curve

Companies no longer have to train their staff to operate machines and systems with that are too technical in nature. Execution of any changes like code and backing up the database to capture even updates can be run quickly without much hassle.

10. Lower Costs

Because cloud resources are easily scalable and no hardware and software licenses are required for the usage of the cloud, there is a reduction of costs for companies to operate their businesses. Also, the cloud can be customized according to the needs of the company. Size of storage and rates of the plan may be altered accordingly.

Conclusion

The cloud is being accepted as a great solution to many company’s problems in terms of resources, efficiency and cost. Businesses then are encouraged to embrace this technology, as experts see that the future will make use of cloud computing further. The choice is either to stay outdated and be left behind or keep up with modern innovations.

Article Contribution:

Vanessa Parks is a Freelance Systems Analyst and Cloud Storage Consultant. She has been an advocate of Desktop virtualisation and unified computing for improved work efficiency and performance. She also has a passion in dancing, cooking and playing golf.