Why You Should Move Your Business to the Cloud

At Binary Blue we’re big advocates of cloud computing. We’ve completed numerous cloud migrations and seen the positive impacts that this monumental change can have on businesses.

We also understand that undergoing a cloud migration often strikes fear into the hearts of C-Suite executives and IT departments, often leading to them asking one of the most common questions associated with cloud computing.

“But why move to the cloud?”

In this blog, we’re going to answer that question by listing the top ten advantages of cloud computing that will convince anyone – even the most apprehensive of IT departments.

Not sure where to start with the Cloud? Read up on the basics in our blog.

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Why Move to the Cloud?

Overall, there are eight key reasons to move to the cloud. They are:

1. Reduced business costs
2. Newfound flexibility
3. Easy scalability
4. Increased productivity
5. Time-saving
6. Disaster recovery
7. Tightened security 
8. Less business downtime

We expand a little more on these below.

1. Business costs are reduced

On the surface, cloud migration can sound expensive. But it doesn’t have to be, and once it’s completed, it will actually save your organisation money. How? Because cloud computing services are paid for on a Pay-As-You-Go structure. Your organisation will only pay for what you use, whether that’s 500GB or 2TB. 

You also don’t have the expenditure or worry of establishing and running a dedicated data centre. Because data centres house hundreds of servers, the right equipment, like cooling fans, electricity, and even IT technicians, must be purchased to install, manage, and oversee the centre in the event of something going wrong. Cloud computing removes this worry, because the data is not stored on the premises and it’s managed by a dedicated service provider 24/7.

2. It’s flexible

The way we work is changing. In the beginning of the 2020 global pandemic, working from home was seen as a temporary solution but a year on and it’s transforming the way businesses work. Huge conglomerates such as Twitter, Slack and Shopify are all realising that they can recruit talent from anywhere in the world by implementing a remote working structure. 

To be able to successfully deploy such a structure, employees need to be able to access their work from anywhere: And this is what the cloud provides. Employees can access their information from wherever they are in the world provided they have an internet connection, allowing them to work from home or even work on location. Office overheads are also therefore reduced if workstations are removed, saving the business costs.

3. It’s scalable

When a business grows, it needs to take on more resources. More resources often leads to more storage, which leads to more licenses, which leads to more servers, and so on. Often a business won’t effectively utilise the storage space it’s paid for either, because the options are inflexible.

Whereas with cloud computing, scaling the business is easy. If the organisation needs additional licenses and storage space, it simply needs to talk to its service provider who will upgrade the package within minutes. Such a quick turnaround also keeps the business running efficiently, which means scaling can be done at a much faster rate when compared to a competitor running a data centre, for example.

Find out what defines a Cloud Migration Service, here.

4. It’s productive

Businesses are always looking to increase their productivity and a cloud computing solution can be the often overlooked missing piece of the puzzle.

Cloud computing boosts both individual and team productivity because it provides the opportunity to collaborate. Teams can share data, documents and projects from wherever they are and make changes or provide updates in live-time. 

Cloud computing also removes repetitive tasks like data entry or manual filing because the cloud will automatically save documents or projects in live-time.

This improves efficiency, increases productivity and also promotes a culture of collaboration, knitting teams together.

5. It saves time

Data stored on the cloud is data that can be accessed from anywhere, by the people it’s authorised to be accessed by. This means that if a department is waiting for help on a particular project, they don’t need to wait until members from another department are in the office or free — they can access the information they need in seconds instead.

Cloud computing also saves the amount of time spent on data entry or filing, and it reduces business downtime in the event of a data-centre or server needing a new update or patch. 

6. Disaster? No problem

In a data centre or other traditional computing environment, data storage is often synonymous with the cost of a backup plan. This is because if a disaster was to occur, permanent data loss could occur should a backup plan not be in place.

On the cloud, that worry is completely removed. Data stored to the cloud has an incredibly minimal at best chance of being lost because cloud data is stored in multiple locations. That means that should an issue occur with retrieving the data from one location, it will simply be retrieved from another in its place. 

Some businesses specifically use cloud computing for data recovery because it saves recovery time in the event of a disaster taking place and avoids large up-front investments into backup plans.

7. Your cybersecurity becomes mega-security

If there is a breach of security at your workplace, or your data centre faces a phishing attempt or cyber attack, data stored on-site could potentially be compromised risking a number of consequences for both the business and its clients.

Data stored on the cloud however is data that is untouchable to a cyber-criminal. Cloud service providers keep data secure by encrypting it, which means it’s pretty much impossible to decode and get into. 

8. Business downtime transforms to constant uptime

When data is stored on-site or in a data centre, IT technicians are responsible for the management of the servers which extends to applying updates, fixing problems, or installing patches.

These installations can have a knock on effect on business productivity when the service is offline for an amount of time due to the installation or maintenance taking place. 

This is another business problem that cloud computing negates. Cloud service providers will install updates and take care of maintenance, and usually prefer to do these updates outside of peak hours. That means that businesses barely see patches, updates or scheduled maintenance happening. Instead, they just keep humming along with little to no interruption.

We’re as much experts in cloud computing as we are advocates for it, and at Binary Blue we have years of experience in assisting businesses with their cloud migrations. We can find the best service providers, keep your team informed, connected and secured and migrate your small business from an on-site set-up to a cloud solution. If you’re considering making the move, don’t delay. Get in touch with one of our friendly team today and let us help make your cloud transition seamless.