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Migration to both private and public cloud solutions appears to have become quite popular recently. Businesses across all sectors, sizes, and geographies are turning to cloud technology to facilitate workflows and store data. This is because the cloud infrastructure makes a lot of sense for its flexibility in computing power and business continuity if a disaster affects physical facilities. (1)

Cloud computing also offers improved security, scalability, cost savings, and many more features. In this article, you’ll learn what cloud computing means for your business as well as five of the top benefits it brings.

The term cloud computing describes the use of network-delivered hardware and software over the internet. Previously, businesses ran their applications and programs from physical computers or servers within their premises, which they downloaded from the internet. With cloud computing, users can access the same applications over the internet without physical servers.

Cloud-based solutions allow you to set up your office virtually, giving your business flexibility to connect with workflow and applications from anywhere. This helps free up individual computers’ memory and computing power by storing software, workflows, and databases on their servers. Cloud computing services are provided and maintained by cloud service providers.

There are many benefits of migrating your business to the cloud. But here are five of the best ones.

• It promotes business scalability

One of the major advantages cloud computing brings is scalability. Your business can easily, efficiently, and quickly scale operations upwards or downwards as your needs demand. Instead of purchasing and installing a permanent upgrade, you might not need in the future, a cloud-based solution is an excellent option for your growing business and its changing needs.

As a business grows, it has fluctuating needs that can make it challenging to plan for the proper computing capacity. Being on the cloud allows you to increase or decrease your capacity without investing in physical infrastructure. This level of flexibility in business operations can give you a great advantage over your competitors.

In addition, scalability eliminates the risks associated with operating in-house teams and infrastructure maintenance. The cloud provides you with high-quality and performing resources without upfront fees. This makes scalability among the top benefits of cloud-based solutions to businesses.

• It can save costs

There’s no need to invest in expensive infrastructure in cloud computing. There’s also no upfront fee required to acquire software either. This eliminates a huge chunk of upfront and recurring information technology (IT) costs. You don’t need a team to run and maintain your servers as well, putting back cash into your pockets.

In addition, you’re able to pay for only what you need. Cloud-based solutions are offered on a pay-as-you-go model, meaning you pay only for the resources you use in a subscription plan. Your subscription applies to storage space, allowing you to only pay for your needs. If you put together these factors, you’ll find you get better services with cloud computing at a significantly lower cost.

• It provides better business insights

As things progress further into the digital age, it’s becoming clearer that data are money. In today’s business environment, you can’t underestimate the power of acquiring proper data insights for your business. The data you possess in your business processes and customer transaction data are invaluable and actionable information that could move your business to greater levels.

However, sifting through such large amounts of data to find what’s valuable to your business is an uphill task, that is, unless you have the right computing solution. Cloud computing allows you to have a bird’s eye view of your data. Besides, it’s easier to implement tracking mechanisms for data on the cloud and build better reports because your data aren’t scattered. From the data insights you get, you can easily improve business efficiency, make better decisions, and build actions plans that help boost your return on investment.

• It allows faster disaster recovery and business continuity

A business on the cloud no longer has to worry about the complications of recovering from a disaster. The cloud service providers deal with all the issues enabling their customers to get back on their feet soon rather than later.

You’re assured that whether your business faces a natural disaster, emergency scenario, or power outage, you always have access to your workflow and applications, even when your physical devices are damaged. You can get back to business faster than when depending on legacy servers. (2)

• It enables improved business interaction and collaboration

Excellent collaboration and interaction between teams are at the heart of a business’s success. Cloud-based solutions are a great enabler of business collaborations and interactions between the management, teams, and customers. By using cloud-based productivity and workflow tools, you have that aspect quite simplified for you.

You can have teams collaborate effectively even when they’re working from different time zones around the globe. Members can co-author documents, conduct meetings, share files, and message each other in real-time. This can improve productivity at the workplace quite drastically. Generally, cloud-based solutions also enable you to better build and manage customer relationships and communication. While you can still collaborate without the cloud, it won’t be an easy feat.

Cloud computing brings with it many benefits. There’s a reason most enterprises have adopted it, and the numbers of those joining the bandwagon keep growing. As this technology grows, it’s becoming more accessible to businesses, as well as easier to adopt and use. You can save your business resources, improve collaboration, and promote business continuity by taking your business to the cloud. (3)

1. “Cloud Adoption Statistics for 2021,” Source: https://hostingtribunal.com/blog/cloud-adoption-statistics/#gref
2. “Average downtime for data recovery for cloud versus non-cloud users,” Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-downtime-for-data-recovery-for-cloud-versus-non-cloud-users-26_fig6_342154295
3. “Gartner Forecasts Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Grow 18% in 2021,” Source: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-11-17-gartner-forecasts-worldwide-public-cloud-end-user-spending-to-grow-18-percent-in-2021