Posted on January 18, 2021
Cloud
Did you know that organizations can expect to save up to 35% on operating costs by deploying cloud services?
Your organization can save enormous amounts of time and money by embracing cloud technology.
Are you ready to leap into the cloud? What could your organization do with 35% savings on your IT budget? The possibilities should excite your imagination and motivate you to make a decision.
You’re going to love what you’re about to discover. Keep reading to learn about the pros and cons of cloud computing for yourself.
You don’t have to hug your servers to maintain your data’s integrity and protect yourself from liability. With today’s cloud computing options, you can find solutions that save money and increase collaboration. You’re going to love the advantages of cloud computing below.
Assume that you have the best equipment and employees who should teach at MIT. Do you have anything to worry about with your servers?
You can’t stop human fallibility. When your local team makes a mistake while managing on-premise equipment, your options for support caused the problem. When you move your business to the cloud, you remove the headaches business owners have dealt with for years.
Installing and maintaining infrastructure falls on your budget. But you can split the cost for cloud computing with a provider’s clients. When something goes wrong, you have a team of dedicated professionals to maintain your uptime and save you money.
Did you know on-premise organizations have 51% more security incidents than cloud subscribers? You don’t have to be a Fortune 500 company to experience a data loss disaster. The average cost for a data breach for companies in the U.S. averages out at $7.91 million.
When you move your data to the cloud, you don’t have one point of failure to worry over. Your organization’s information gets spread across several servers. If one fails, your data stays secure.
Do you remember reading about the Verizon or Equifax data breaches? Major U.S. companies made the switch to the cloud to avoid this type of liability.
Hope is not a strategy for disaster management.
Unplanned downtime does more than hurt your bottom line: it damages your reputation with your customers. You cannot underestimate the costs associated with company downtime: one minute down costs American companies up to $5,600 or $300,000 per hour.
Can your organization afford to pay for that?
Loss of productivity means you’ve lost time that you can never have back. 61% of small businesses have less frequent and shorter downtime than when they maintained on-premise servers.
Have you found yourself within that many people could view and make changes to a document at one time? Cloud computing gives you that kind of power to collaborate on projects as an organization.
You no longer have to wonder if you wasted time on the current version of a document because you didn’t receive a local version. Stop passing obsolete versions of your work to each other and know what needs attention.
When you’re a small business, space comes at a premium cost. When you transition to the cloud, you don’t need that server closet or room anymore. The costs for that equipment moves into a digital realm where commercial real estate prices don’t apply.
Do you see the server stack in the breakroom as a liability for recruiting talent? Moving to the cloud can give your office an extra polish of professionalism, also.
Do you find yourself talking about extra storage with your IT team every financial quarter? If you’re part of a growing company, on-demand scalable growth helps you keep up with the competition.
Think about the last round of equipment that you bought for employees. How much time and money went into the planning, training, and ongoing maintenance?
Do you remember the last time you had to buy a laptop for an employee who only needed a handful of applications? Imagine being able to spread your dollars and have one of the critical benefits of cloud computing. When you need more room to grow in the cloud, you only pay for what you need instead of every cost associated with one tool that you need.
Would you like to spend your IT budget on managing problems or improving user experience? When you move your maintenance to a cloud service, you can do more with only one or two professionals on staff. 99% server uptime offers the opportunity to stop worrying about performance and start improving business processes.
While you have great flexibility for growth and more room in your office without the servers, no cloud service offers a perfect solution. Learn about the disadvantages of cloud computing and how to limit them below.
While cloud providers offer similar options, you’ll find critical differences after reading the details in their service agreements.
No two services provide the same level of support, software, or storage. Go over the details of any plan with a sales representative before signing on the dotted line.
While you don’t have to worry about a hefty up-front investment for cloud computing services, you do need to plan for recurring costs. Vendors tend to provide a monthly or annual subscription option based on your data needs. You must review your expectations around return on investment for cloud computing.
The headline alone may turn you off from cloud options, but it’s crucial to understand the details.
Freedom with cloud computing presents a double-edged sword to customers. You don’t have to worry about your IT infrastructure anymore because you pay your provider for that service.
That also means you don’t have the same level of control.
Pay close attention to the EULA (end-user license agreement) and ask questions about limitations for your deployment. You should have options to have control over your data and applications. Infrastructure remains your service provider’s problem.
Read every word of the SLA (service level agreement). You’ll find most of the clarity you’re looking for from that document.
When your cloud service or internet connection fails, you don’t have access to the data you need. Working on-premise during an outage becomes a potential problem that needs addressing.
The good news: if you experience an outage, your data will not be compromised. Everything remains safe in the cloud, even if you can’t reach out and touch it.
It’s essential to plan for increased internet usage, also. Backups need heavy bandwidth, and you can create congested traffic that slows everyone down. If you live in a rural area without access to high-speed internet, doing business in the cloud can become problematic at best.
You can avoid these problems by developing a plan with your internet provider and cloud service. Don’t guess at the bandwidth you’re going to need. Find out with certainty by talking to professionals.
It’s not hard to complete an on-premise to cloud migration, but neither is throwing a football. Most people can throw a football, but hardly anyone can toss one at the same level as an NFL quarterback.
A smooth transition to the cloud requires a dedicated team of motivated leaders. Don’t allow costs to explode. Understand every step of the process with your supplier and coordinate with your team.
Are you moving from one cloud supplier to another one? Do you want to pull your data from the cloud and put it back in your on-premise server? Those efforts need even more skill and attention to avoid serious difficulties.
Configuration of your cloud remains the most common security risk for clients and service providers. Regular maintenance and planning can prevent most issues, but you have to have confidence in your strategy.
The most common misconfiguration issues include:
Most agreements favor your cloud service provider, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a positive relationship.
You can avoid most problems by understanding your options in clear language.
If you don’t find the service satisfactory, you need certainty that your original provider will handle migrations with professionalism.
Cloud computing services offer flexibility, but that can come at a cost. Only you can decide if the invoices outweigh the increase in your bottom line.
Where do you go from here? What do you do with this knowledge about the pros and cons of cloud computing? Do you have questions that you didn’t find answers to in this post?
NETdepot representatives love answering your questions about cloud services. Contact us by calling 1-844-25-CLOUD and do your best to stump our experts. We love a good challenge.