Five Top Reasons to Go to the Cloud
You have probably seen lists like this in many places on the web lately as more and more bloggers and web writers see the value of moving any kind of business, whether it is a small start-up or a large enterprise, onto the cloud. Since we have always believed in the value of the cloud, here are our top five reasons we feel that any business should be looking at moving their business to the cloud.
Data Backup – One of the most important elements, this is also one of the best reasons to move as many elements of your business as you can to the cloud. Backup of critical data is a headache for almost all businesses and yet you can easily setup a backup of all your data through a variety of solutions such as Carbonite, SugarSync, and CrashPlan. Combine this offsite cloud backup with two additional copies kept elsewhere (the 3-2-1 rule of three copies, two separate data and one offsite) and you will never have to worry about losing your data in a disaster again.
File Sharing/Virtual Machines – With the cloud you can have all your data accessible to all your offices at the same time. Since the data is shared in the cloud, the same documents are accessible without creating multiple copies that float around between offices. The same is true of the concept of virtual machines. With all your data on the cloud, workers can move from office to office or desk to desk, access what they are working on from anywhere. And with the software all in the cloud, investment in software is under control with plenty of options for a wide variety of cloud operating systems that means businesses can always have the latest software versions and the power of top-end machines without the investment.
Hosting Your Website – More and more businesses are seeing the wisdom in not going through the effort and money to buy the servers and spend the time creating and running their company site. Having it hosted in the cloud saves time, money and gives the business time to invest in ways to use that site to grow the business instead of just maintaining it.
Cloud Based Business Tools – Why spend the time and money on buying and learning software tools that you will need to maintain for everyone in your office when you can use cloud based office tools such as SalesForce for CRM-based solutions or even track statistics anytime and anywhere. These cloud-based business tools are flexible and can be tailored to your business needs, accessed from anywhere including your laptop when you are looking for that important piece of information for an upcoming business meeting, and give you a quick look at who uses what tools to help you forecast your business needs.
Cost Savings – This is the one you hear everywhere about the cloud for a good reason, it is probably the biggest reason most companies start looking at moving their operations to the cloud. The sheer cost of infrastructure and IT staff to support it has made moving into the cloud look better and better each year. If your business does game development, video and other media or you are looking to launch a business, you will find that the cloud makes collaboration easy. There are more companies offering cloud hosting so the options are better than ever, and once the move has been made, most companies find themselves wondering why they didn’t do it sooner.
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