Given that technology plays such an important part in your small business, if you have not migrated at least some of your technology needs to the cloud you are missing out on a major technological wave changing the face of business operations – in terms of convenience, reduced cost, and scalability of your operations.
Traditionally, business owners whose core service was based on computer technology needed to purchase expensive servers and storage, and hire personnel to set all this up and keep it running. This was, and continues to be, an expensive proposition – made even more so by the need to periodically upgrade your hardware to keep it current and to handle increased demands as your business grows.
More recently, computer service companies began offering an attractive alternative to this scenario by providing access to shared computer processing resources and data to computers and other devices on demand. This new cloud computing business model enables ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g. computer networks, servers, storage, applications and services) to any business needing them. These resources can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort.
The main benefit of Cloud Computing is that your business is no longer responsible for acquiring, housing, setting up and maintaining hardware that is guaranteed to become obsolete in a year or two. Instead, cloud computing service providers charge a periodic subscription-style fee for the amount and level of service you need. In most cases, this is an extremely cost-beneficial arrangement. Free of the expense and hassle of dealing with computer infrastructure, you can focus your time and energy on the core needs of your business and its customers.
Resources are easily managed and administered directly via any internet-enabled device – desktops, laptops, even tablets and phones – via a vendor-supplied dashboard-style control interface. As your needs grow, you can add more capacity or additional services to your subscription on-demand. Integrating cloud computing resources with your existing office computer infrastructure is a remarkably simple process with a short learning curve.
Cloud computing makes it easy for your employees to share data and resources. As cloud computing collaboration tools continue to be developed and proliferate, your employees benefit from streamlined operations and increased efficiency. Support for these tools on multiple platforms increases the convenience of their use by your staff, and this in turn builds value to your company.
Taken together, the advantages of cloud computing described above make a compelling case for your technology-based business to consider taking advantage of cloud services.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245784