If you’ve been researching IT solutions for your business, you’ve probably heard people talking about “The Cloud”. But what is it and how could it help your business?
We’re going to go over these points today to help you decide whether cloud computing could benefit your organisation.
What Is The Cloud?
The cloud refers to anything that is taking place off-premises on someone else’s computer or on someone else’s data centre so that you can protect your data and play best Gaming Chair without any hassle For instance, if you’ve used a web-based email service like Gmail you’ll know that you can access your emails from anywhere in the world on any device simply by logging in to your account. This because the messages aren’t stored on your device, they’re stored on Google’s servers and then access by you. We would say they are stored “in the cloud”.
As internet connectivity is becoming more ubiquitous and the need for data to be stored locally is reduce, more and more technology is becoming cloud-based.
How Would My Business Benefit From Using The Cloud?
Data storage, backup and disaster recovery, cybersecurity and CRM platforms are some of the most popular uses for cloud technology in the world of business.
One of the benefits of using these technologies in a cloud environment is that it uses no physical space on your premises. If you’re a data intensive business which deals with multiple terabytes or even petabytes of data on a daily basis it would take a large number of physical servers if you were to do that entirely in house. By having a cloud solution for data storage, you save on the space and running costs of a physical server.
Scalability is a related benefit; you can easily scale up or down the amount of cloud space you require month by month as your business circumstances change. There’s no capital expenditure for doubling your storage size, just an increased monthly fee.
Redundancy is also an important advantage, cloud providers constantly backup the data on their servers to multiple locations meaning that if one goes offline for any reason, the others can pick up the slack. This normally equates to zero downtime. A great deal when compared to the hours of downtime you would waste waiting for an engineer to travel to your site and fix a server.
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Public, Private & Hybrid Clouds
There are three main types of cloud services; public, private and hybrid clouds.
Public clouds are cloud services provided by a thirds party, the biggest cloud services providers are Amazon (AWS platform), Microsoft (Azure platform) and Google (Google Cloud platform). By partnering with these providers, you get excellent customer support and the reliability of working with some of the biggest names in tech. AWS alone accounts for approximately 40% of the content on the internet. The last time you watched a film on Netflix it will have been delivered via an AWS server.
Private clouds are cloud networks run on your own hardware on your own premises or on servers rented directly by you from a data centre. The benefit of a public cloud is that you have complete control over the data stored on it and how the cloud infrastructure itself is organised. The downside is that there is no one to call if things go wrong, you have complete responsibility for your data, its security and your backups. Depending on the regulations and legislations that your company operates under, a private cloud may be the only compliant option for much of your data.
Hybrid-Cloud environments are a combination of public and private clouds. Businesses may be comfortable offloading some parts of their IT infrastructure onto the cloud while wanting to keep others private. For example, they may run their disaster recovery through a cloud platform while keeping customer data secured on a private cloud.
How Do I Implement The Cloud In My Business?
If you’re convinced of the benefits of cloud computing and are looking to implement them in your company, the first thing to do is to consult with a cloud computing expert. If you do not have an internal IT department then you should see your way to contacting a managed IT services provider. Make sure to check that they are cloud computing specialists and ask them for specific examples of when they have implemented cloud solutions in the past. You should also speak with other business owners in the same sector as you about what their experience of cloud computing has been.
We hope this has been a useful guide to the fundamental of cloud computing and its benefits. Good luck on your journey to the cloud.
