The Cloud has been around in public knowledge for over five years, yet many businesses are still to use Cloud Storage and Computing to their full potential. The Cloud can provide solutions to age-old business issues, such as difficulties with increases in scale, to decentralising work, or allowing staff to work remotely.
With news this week that up to 78% of businesses are using at least one cloud based service, I think that so much more can still be done to make completely remote , collaborate and communicate working a possibility. Doing so, all without the burdens of self-hosted solutions and local storage creates.
With that in mind, here’s your guide to understanding The Cloud for business in 2014:
1. Reduced need for disaster recovery
Data lost is bad for business, we all know that, though most people don’t know that a business has an 80% chance of folding within three years of a major data loss. Or that 93% of businesses who lose connection to their data for 10 days will go out of business. Or that 25% of computers fail in a given year. I don’t wish to scare-monger, but those are less than pleasant statistics.
Handing over responsibility for storage of data, and all the issues which come with it, is arguably still the strongest reason for Cloud Storage in 2014. With Cloud Storage solutions such as Google Drive, OneDrive or Amazon S3, data is distributed locally and globally, ensuring a high level of redundancy and effectively eliminating the risk of data lost.
2. Reduced cost
A large percentage of Cloud Storage and Compute services run with a pay-what-you-use model meaning that you only need to buy the package which suites your storage or processing needs. Not only does this reduce costs, and prevent maintenance on unused infrastructure, but it also gives luxuries of scale, without initial investment.
Let’s say you’re a small sized digital marketing business with multiple clients, one of which whom is going to have a long HD video produced and hosted. Rather than purchasing local storage for production backups, which will have purchasing and upkeep costs, you can scale your Cloud Storage to accommodate for this short term increase.
A similar policy can be taken for bandwidth requirements if this video is placed online and goes viral, this rapid spike in traffic would have been unmanageable in the past, but scalable hosting or Cloud Video services such as YouTube this time and monitory expense disappears.
3. No need for on-site management
It’s easy to think of the Cloud as just software, though many of the true savings of the cloud come from it’s utilisation of external hardware. Cloud services take advantage of distributed servers which when combined form a network known as “The Cloud”, which are comprised of (often) massive data centres, in multiple interactional locations. Take Starleaf for example, their multiple datacenters, around Europe and the world, not only ensure a quality connection regardless of location, but are also a built-in redundancy when issues do occur.
The real advantage of this for business, is massive reduction on in cost which comes with fewer onsite staff and a more streamlined process. Cloud Storage and Computing services almost entirely remove the need for onsite; system administrators and server mangers.
In 2014 the reality of being completely device and location independent is coming to fruition, with cloud productivity software such as Office365 combined with mail and calendar services, it is possible to work from anywhere. Remote working with ‘The Cloud’ can mean so much more than just accessing Word, or answering emails. With tools such as Starleaf, you can bring teams together, working globally – as if you were in the same room.
4. Globalised working and increased collaboration
With the ability to work from any location, you start to have luxuries which were not available when the entire team had to be in the same room. Business meetings can now happen on the train from a tablet, just as easily as they can in front of your 70” interactive display in your boardroom. Files can be worked on independent of device, in multiple locations, updating in real-time.
Though the greatest benefit to many companies will be increased collaboration, having the freedom to interact with your teams in a way which feels natural, regardless of barriers which would have been previously impossible to by-pass. We’re rapidly moving into a world where expertise matter more than location of hardware; we think that’s a good thing, and we think that video conferencing and remote working are big parts of that.
5. Pre-built tools and services
Why create tools if they’ve already been built? In the past, before the democratisation of the internet, every company had to build their own tool. This meant that slight alterations became very expensive and many companies used out-of-date and unfit for purpose software for years. Now, due to a great deal of competition in Cloud Services, prices are at a race to the bottom whilst service and product have never been stronger.
Take my daily work tasks for example;
- Email — Google Apps (Cloud Mail)
- Task Management — ToDoist (Cloud Storage and Management)
- Documents — Office 365 (Cloud Productivity)
- Store Files — Dropbox (Cloud Storage)
…and that’s all open before my first sip of morning coffee. Before I event start to count the number of industry specific tools, from Adobe’s Creative Suite, to specials social and search tools which fill my browser tabs.
Many businesses are moving towards almost complete cloud utilisation, is your business doing enough? It would be interesting to see your thoughts in the comments below.
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