The cloud is a term used in the technology industry to describe a data center (large bank of computers stored somewhere around the world). In today’s market, the cloud is more important than ever for businesses. It allows for easy collaboration, file storage, disaster recovery and a host of other solutions for your business.
Simply put, the cloud allows businesses to save money, implement efficient technology infrastructure throughout their business, and offers a safe place to manage backup storage.
Below are 3 ways that businesses utilize the cloud throughout their organization.
When you login to your Office 365 account, or use a piece of software like ArcGIS online, Productioneer or Salesforce you are using the cloud. If you are not familiar with those, perhaps you use Facebook, Spotify, or LinkedIn? Again, you have entered “the cloud.” These are all pieces of software that run in the cloud and allow instant access from anywhere with an internet connection.
Collaboration and telecommuting are growing trends across all business sectors. Using email to collaborate is ineffective and unrealistic due to the large amounts of data that would be sent. Many companies look at cloud solutions when it comes to collaboration in the workplace. These can range from a virtual office or a storage location that you can manage. Companies like Sharefile and Files Anywhere, offer collaboration tools for a very reasonable price.
The entire reason companies are looking to the cloud to collaborate with remote employees or clients is that they do not have to invest in infrastructure to get the job done. The cloud makes it easy to implement collaboration tools without the hassle and expenses tied to a server room project.
Ever since I started in the technology field, it was tapes, tapes and more tapes. Before long we had Iron Mountain showing up twice a week to pick up and drop off the 30-50 tapes we had any particular week for them.
Not only is that a pain in the you know what, but it’s inefficient and costly for your business. In today’s technology world, we look to the cloud for backup disaster recovery solutions like Quorum, Unitrends, Datto and StorageCraft.
These companies have completely removed the tape option from the table and give you instant recovery by taking images of your infrastructure and replicating that to the cloud.
What this means is…
If a server fails or an emergency happens during the day, you can start the image of the affected server from the last backup and no one will know the difference. Same IP, same network shares, same server name. Once you fix the affected server, you can shut the cloud server down, and start the repaired server, all the while your customers never knew anything happened.
The bottom line?
The cloud is a more cost effective solution for several of your infrastructure needs. If your infrastructure is based in house, every 3 years, you would need to reinvest to upgrade that equipment. In the cloud, you don’t have these expenses.
Altogether, the cloud offers low cost, offsite storage, recovery and peace of mind for your business.