But what’s driving this shift, though? Why is cloud usage growing so dramatically? And what are the drawbacks? Let’s take a look. 

The benefits of moving to the cloud

The benefits of moving to the cloud are tremendous. 

Reduced costs

Perhaps the biggest economic driver of cloud adoption is reduced costs. It’s often just so much cheaper than using traditional in-house services. 

There are four main reasons for this: 

• Economies of scale – it’s cheaper for cloud computing companies to make efficiency improvements because they have so many servers in comparison to a single business.
• Greater utilisation rates – most cloud service providers are running at between 30 and 40 percent (not the usual 10 to 15 percent of regular in-house systems).
• Greater flexibility, particularly when installing and updating new software.
• Reduced management and organisational costs of making IT network changes as these are spread across many customers not just one.

More support

Firms are also switching to the cloud because of improved support. They want to have people on the phone immediately who can help them resolve technical issues, without having to wait for engineers to travel to them and fix problems. Most cloud service providers give customers the ability to file tickets with them and get quick responses often more or less instantly and certainly within an hour or two. 

Greater Scalability

The cloud is also scalable. It’s easy to add new accounts or storage space because the physical capacity to do so already exists in a large server farm. It’s also easy to go the other way and reduce the number of licenses needed and keep costs closely aligned to your needs.

Access

Then there are the access benefits. Employees can get into their accounts no matter where they are in the world, so long as they have an internet connection. They don’t have to go into the office and sign in via a legacy portal. 

Real-time collaboration

Lastly, the cloud facilitates real-time collaboration. Staff can log and work on projects together in real-time, including spreadsheets, documents and even building designs. More and more applications are being developed that enhance the way dispersed teams worth together. 

The downsides of using the cloud

Unfortunately, there are some disadvantages of using the cloud. These include: 

• Losing the ability to fully control your data as at some point you are storing it with another company (the cloud provider).
• Vulnerabilities in shared environments, particularly if people connect using their private devices remotely. You will need to have control over a wider range of devices and ways that people access the data.
• The need to protect yourself against poorly designed or insecure APIs and user interfaces.

What a good cloud IT provider should offer

There is considerable variation in the quality of cloud IT service providers. A good one should offer the following: 

• A consultative approach to tailor the cloud infrastructure closely to your business needs rather than taking a “one size fits all approach”
• Certifications and standards confirming their expertise with a wide range of software and hardware providers
• Support for migration from legacy systems over to the cloud
• Service level agreements (SLAs), spelling out precisely what they will offer you
• Good reliability and performance
• A backup strategy to protect your data in all circumstances
• Growth and future planning to ensure your systems track your development

We have a wide range of clients of all shapes and sizes and would welcome the opportunity to discuss your cloud plans with you. If you are completely new to cloud computing, then we can talk you through the main benefits for your organisation. Please give us a call or drop us a line.

There are a wide range of benefits of Cloud computing, for example:

1. Reduced IT costs – Although there is a cost involved in the initial switch to the Cloud, the ongoing cost savings it provides are a strong driver for most organisations. No more system upgrades, reduced hardware costs, reduced IT Support costs, reduced energy bills are all likely savings you will benefit from. With a pay as you go model you don’t have to buy what you’re not using.
2. Scalability – As well as the cost savings mentioned, scalability means you can rapidly react to increase or decrease the resources you need for business growth or seasonal increases and decreases. Many businesses have peak periods and the Cloud will allow you to deal with this far more effectively than fixed IT infrastructure.
3. Business Continuity – Vitally important to all organisations, ensuring business continuity means having essential backups in place to minimise any potential downtime caused by hardware or software failures. The Cloud allows you to create multiple backups, in many different locations, and to quickly switch between them if and when required.
4. Collaboration efficiency – As we have clearly seen during the recent crisis, the ability to collaborate efficiently while being located in many places, means the whole team requires access to the same updated files in a central location. Changes made in one place can be seen instantly by all. A Cloud based system provides this for you.
5. Flexibility – and alongside this ability to collaborate, your team can now work Anywhere, not just in one country but spread across the world if required. In addition they can move from home to office or another location and not lose access to key operating systems and data.
6. Automatic updates – Remember how big an event a system or application software update used to be? Entire departments taken offline while their software was updated. With the Cloud software updates are implemented without downtime and quite often without the users even knowing an update has taken place. This means important security patches for example can be implemented more or less instantly across your entire network.
7. Cyber Security – Every day there seems to be a new report of some kind of hacking taking place. Generally cyber security is more stringently managed by Cloud providers as they have a greater concentration of resources available to them than many businesses.
8. Sustainability – Although all IT equipment and systems come with some form of carbon footprint, Cloud based systems provide greater efficiencies in areas such as hardware by providing for example virtual servers rather than physical products. They also help in operating costs by reducing paper usage, reducing unnecessary travel and improving energy efficiency.

All organisations are different and there is no one size fits all solution, but an audit of your current systems would allow us to estimate cost savings for any part or full switch to the Cloud. We can look at your IT infrastructure now and discuss a pathway for accessing these significant benefits.

We can also advise on how to obtain a cost-effective HSCN connection if you need one and what the differences are between that and the old N3 system.

Please drop us a line and we will be happy to help.