SMEs are always competing with the technology of their corporate counterparts. Big companies are always looking for ways to speed up the market and reduce costs. In the world of cloud services, cloud migration can be the biggest shared incentive for small and medium-sized companies and businesses.
This could be the reason why national cloud spending increased almost eightfold from 2010 to 2020. By 2021, more than 70% of enterprises already using cloud services plan to increase their spending.
Much of this can be attributed to COVID-19 and the success of cloud services in 2020, but it’s an acceleration of a pre-existing trend.
Benefits of cloud migration in 2021
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Scalable hardware: Pay only for what you use
After migrating to the cloud, you don’t have much hardware left. However, this isn’t too bad. You no longer have to balance with enough hardware to handle the toughest workloads, just to keep the rest of the time idle.
Idle servers and hardware cost the US economy more than $30 billion due to hardware inefficiency and energy losses in 2015. Cloud computing reduces these costs through more efficient use of data centers and servers.
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Reduce data security risks
One of the best benefits of cloud migration is the lower footprint for your safety. After migrating to the cloud, not all risk is eliminated, but most of it is outsourced in some form. You no longer keep the data where it belongs, but keep it in a safe place.
This has the added benefit of informing your company of the physical security requirements associated with your data. Some of this data includes customer information.
Storing your data in the cloud can reduce regulatory pressure on your company to store it properly.
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Less maintenance time and cost
Reducing servers and security lowers system costs and puts your technical team under stress. Less hardware means less maintenance, clear and simple.
Your team can now focus more on database administration, security profiling, and other organizational workflows as needed. Instead of taking the time to turn off or update security features, updates are supported by your provider. Reducing complexity and increasing flexibility is always a good way to save time, energy and maintenance costs.
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Reducing the cost of capital
Reducing the cost of capital is a huge advantage, but it will ultimately mean you can reinvest in your business. A Deloitte technology report shows that SMEs are growing 26% faster on average.
83% of startups in the survey believe that cloud technology will provide access to tools and technologies that are beyond the reach of their capital. You are not wrong.
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Reduce your staff costs
Another way to grow your capital is by downsizing your IT team. Because you are dealing with less hardware, you need less staff. Your company’s network engineer costs an average of $83,510, or $40.15 per hour.
One can definitely get overwhelmed even in a small business. With your services in place, don’t be surprised if you have to hire more IT staff to keep up.
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Improve your operational efficiency
With fewer staff, you might think that your business will suffer. In fact, operating efficiency increases with fewer hands at work. Cloud services allow you to have less internal IT in control of your company’s technological progress.
A clear vision without too much of a competitive voice allows you to develop your applications and solutions efficiently and at greater speed and bring them to market.
Let your IT professionals spend time innovating your business instead of focusing on maintenance.
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Speed up the development cycle
Speaking of quick work, you can speed up the implementation of your services and applications. Instead of maintaining or setting up a new on-premises IT infrastructure, you can provision new applications or services without worry.
When your cloud service scales its hardware and resources as needed, you get more when you need more. No need to research and implement new proprietary data centers.
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Get your people to work together
Cloud migration allows your company to improve accessibility between departments and applications. All departments in your company can access the same data at the same time, provided they are authorized to do so.
The same systems that facilitate the provision of data also help you manage the authorization of that data through security. Good access control management helps everyone work together better than doing it free for everyone. With cloud services, your company is more inclusive.
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Ensure business continuity in the event of a disaster
Due to the nature of cloud networks, disasters such as data center outages or local power outages are reduced. Power outages cost American businesses more than $27 billion a year.
For factories, that figure could even rise to $5 million per hour. Even smaller businesses like supermarkets can lose up to $30,000 at rest.
There are several reasons why power outages are so detrimental to business. Some of these reasons are:
- Replacement of hardware damaged due to interference
- Secure and expand storage hardware
- Stick with self-hosted apps
- Reduce sales and service during breaks
- This is by no means an exhaustive list.
With the nature of the public cloud and multiple availability zones, you can avoid this risk.
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Integrated, updated, and accessible
Instead of worrying about hardware integration, your cloud computing service provider will take care of all this. The hardware that runs your business is always up-to-date and updated. You can quickly and easily shift your load to the latest instance type.
Migrating to cloud computing gives you full access anytime, anywhere in the world. Remote access means you’re even connected:
- During the last work of domestic restrictions
- Work Office
- Checking project status when traveling abroad
- From almost any connected device
- Imagine what full access, anywhere, anytime, will do for your business at full speed.
These are some of the benefits of moving to cloud computing in 2021.