EVERY CLOUD HAS A SILVER LINING

What is cloud computing and why should your business make the move?

Is your small business considering migrating to the cloud? Maybe your large business has seen more and more competition from small businesses? Cloud computing is essential for businesses of all sizes, but small businesses have seen an endless amount of benefits from cloud computing, including financial, operational, and security benefits. Let’s discuss how each of these items related to cloud computing is changing small business. In 2018, 45% of Irish enterprises employing 10 or more persons purchased cloud computing services. This increased from 36% in 2016 and compared with an EU-28 average of 26% in 2018 (source – cso.ie). So why are all these companies moving to the cloud? Let us begin with a little explanation of what exactly is cloud computing?

Put simply, cloud computing is running and accessing your applications and data online. With cloud computing, you are accessing your data or software over your broadband connection. Your data is stored in secure and controlled data centres instead of in your site or office where you would have to worry about maintaining and constantly upgrading your IT hardware, keeping your data backed up and trying to keep your IT costs down in an ever changing sector.

Mobility & Collaboration

Cloud computing makes it possible to give staff a lot more freedom by allowing them to work remotely. Therefore, it is important that your existing applications and IT infrastructure are perfectly suited to this. Cloud computing allows businesses the opportunity to be virtual instead of physical which is a big positive for your business. Employees have on-demand access to the cloud from anywhere, any time, and the environments are readily available and dependable, which should improve overall team performance.

The ability to connect applications and platforms in the cloud means cross-team or department collaboration is more possible than ever before. With cloud services such as Microsoft’s Office 365 suite you don’t only get access to traditional office application such as email and word processing but a complete suite of collaboration and communication tolls that allow you to access, share and edit documents anywhere, anytime together.

Financial savings and scalability

There has been a huge change in IT spending, shifting away from traditional IT offerings (enterprise software, data centre systems, etc.) to cloud based services. A lot of money is being invested in cloud computing because there are so many financial benefits for small businesses. The cost of cloud computing gives small businesses access to the same IT applications that larger competitors have.

With no on-site servers, the operational costs of running and maintaining them is removed, thus eliminating unnecessary expense on maintenance and power etc. With a traditional IT setup, a company can spend a fortune before it gets any value from its investment in its IT systems. Cloud based solutions allow customers to be savvy with your costs, turning off non-essential servers at night, on weekends or during quiet periods. This approach delivers massive cost savings and the ability to have technology that can scale and grow with your business. Additional capacity can be provisioned for peak times and then de-provisioned when no longer required. A more traditional computing system would require companies to buy capacity sufficient for peak times and then allowing it to sit idle the rest of the time.

Reliability

Most cloud providers are extremely reliable in providing their services, with many maintaining 99.99% uptime. The connection is always on and as long as workers have an Internet connection, they can get to the applications they need from practically anywhere. You don’t need to worry about server maintenance or downtime. If the cloud server fails, the hosted files can easily be transitioned to other available servers within minutes.

Enhanced Security

Cloud vendors offer numerous data centres, backup, disaster recovery and layers of security. These are frequently audited to keep security up to date. The truth is that data is likely to be more secure with a reputable cloud vendor than on most businesses’ own premises. It’s becoming exceedingly difficult for businesses to stay on top of security, patches, upgrades and vulnerabilities with the same tenacity and dedication of a reputable cloud vendor.

A greener business

By investing in more and more cloud computing solutions, we are collectively having less of an impact on the environment. Companies who use shared resources improve their ‘green’ credentials. This in turn, can have a healthy impact on the environment. A lot of companies have even managed to share resources and secure their status as being environmentally friendly and instead of using fuel, many cloud-hosting providers now use wind, hydro or solar power as a component of their energy resources.

Jason McLaughlin

Technology and Computers have always been at the forefront of every role Jason has worked at. During his time with SuperQuinn, technology and order systems were greatly improved with his expertise. During his time with OKI Printing Solutions he also specialised in Business Process Automation and workflows for large organisations that required the latest technology from a print output point of view. His love for technology continued into roles in Dublin Zoo were efficiencies and workflows improved in the Zoo using the latest systems that he implemented.

He joined Ortus in February 2015 to join a young dynamic team with a vision. He joined as Sales Manager of a young team hoping to expand the team and the company.