Why Move to the Cloud? Here Are 5 Must-Know Benefits
If you’ve been hearing all the buzz around cloud technology in recent years, it may be spurring some questions in your organization: Why move to the cloud? Is cloud just for large enterprises? What benefits come with a cloud migration?
The Benefits of Cloud Migration
Reduced Costs: This is often the topic that drives conversation around a move to the cloud. Because you are not required to purchase hardware, and software is utilized via a subscription-based payment model that can be categorized as operational expenses, cloud migration can be a significant cost savings for enterprises. The cloud provider handles maintenance, so it also reduces the demand on your IT team.
Scalability: Rather than buy an incremental number of user licenses and have some of them sit unused, cloud solutions allow you to scale up and down as needed. This is particularly helpful for companies that have a seasonality component to their business.
Business Continuity: Cloud solutions offer a high level of reliability. With vast networks of servers, cloud providers ensure built-in failover and ease of recovery in case of a natural disaster or cyber security breach.
Agility and Innovation: As enterprises pivot or make changes to goals, cloud solutions allow for agile reactivity to those goals. In addition, cloud technology levels the playing field in terms of the budget and size of your organization. It used to be that only the biggest budgets could afford the best software solutions, but cloud options make the latest innovations available to companies of all sizes.
Work Any Time, Anywhere: One benefit of cloud technology may be the only answer you need to the question, “Why move to the cloud?” As remote teams become the norm, the benefit of being able to work anywhere there is connectivity is a productivity boost for enterprises.
Public, Private, or Hybrid
As your enterprise considers cloud migration, you will quickly run across options for public, private, and hybrid cloud environments. A private cloud is a way to gain a high level of customizability and security, but you tend to pay a premium for this type of cloud environment. Public cloud allows you to save costs by sharing resources with other cloud customers, while also offering speed and innovative advantages.
Many enterprises find that a hybrid or multi-cloud solution is the best fit, providing a way to strategically place workloads according to their best performance, security requirements, and budgeting considerations.
There are also multiple factors involved when choosing a provider. Consider their security policies, their track record in servicing enterprises similar to you in size and requirements, and the level of support you want to receive. You also want to choose a provider that feels like a partner, even possibly sharing some similarity in company culture and ideas about digital transformation.
As you consider the question, “Why move to the cloud,” there are many factors to include in the process. To get started with a needs evaluation and a broad benefits analysis, contact us at One Connect.