Here we look at how your business can benefit from the cloud. Moving to the cloud is actually becoming the norm as cloud computing increases the efficiency of businesses and is cost effective. Irrespective of the size of your company - cloud services will save you money, which is the bottom line for most businesses.

First of all, let’s have a general look at the cloud; it’s when your computer resources are available when you want them on the Internet. So from any location in the world, as long as you have an Internet connection, you have access to your data without having to have all the information stored on hard drives and computers in your office. Already you can see that it’s a flexible business solution and it is able to grow as your requirements grow.

It certainly makes sense that you pay for what you need in IT capacity, almost like a “pay as you go” system. So you win on 2 fronts as if your business is expanding at a rate of knots you can expand your IT capacity at the same pace quickly and easily and conversely if you need to cut back, you can reduce your capacity at short notice. It’s normal for all companies to have “peaks and troughs” and some businesses are quite seasonal.

Since your servers are housed and managed offsite, it means that you can save on the manpower required to carry out the maintenance and fixing, if things go wrong. It’s well known that good, experienced IT people are expensive to employ. Obviously with your move to the cloud, some of your subscriptions will go to the service provider’s staffing costs but these will be considerably lower than employing your own people.

You will also be saving, as you will no longer have to purchase all the hardware and utilities to operate your data centre. Your computing costs will be reduced, as there is not the requirement to continually update and buy new equipment. So all in all, you will be saving on energy bills, as your servers will be fully utilised and not lying around idle, ultimately meaning a more efficient use of power and monthly subscriptions will also be lower.

Not only can you act rapidly to your business requirements by upscaling or downscaling your IT requirements, but there is a lot more flexibility for your staff as they will have access to files and data from their portable devices including mobile phones, tablets and laptops. This has also been found to be beneficial to staff as they enjoy a better work-life balance.

Naturally nobody wants to lose expensive pieces of mobile equipment but more importantly, nobody wants to lose sensitive and important data and with the cloud you have greater security as you can access it from anywhere and you can remotely wipe any data if it gets into the wrong hands. Security is key to all businesses and although your data is located externally to your business, the locations are more secure than you can offer but due to the expertise of encrypting, partioning and backing up your data, if your data is accessed, it is unusable.

If you are looking for help with your cloud computing services from a company who stays up to date with emerging technology, then get in touch with Relativity, based in Uckfield in East Sussex. We will be able to provide you with a cost effective, flexible and secure service and we are proud to be a Zoho Alliance Partner, so get in touch on +44 1825 280123 or email info@relativity.co.uk              

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