Business Tech

5 Reasons Businesses are Transitioning to the Cloud

With the convenience of the cloud, more and more companies are starting to abandon on-premise storage systems. That's in large due to companies realizing non-cloud-based systems cost more to maintain and require more physical space. Plus, almost no firm can build up the type of redundancy and capacity now readily available through third-party providers.

On top of all that, the immediate savings realized with a cloud-based system means companies are almost being fiscally irresponsible if they don't adopt these systems. But price is far from the only reason companies are leaving behind their old systems in 2017. The following reasons represent a company's common concerns and the benefits of making the change.

Cost Savings

There's no way around it: The cloud is cheaper. This shouldn't be a company's only determining factor in a major business decision. But, when profits are the ultimate goal, pricing becomes pretty important. Any in-house system requires major setup costs and a large payout each year in maintenance.

Then, if anything goes wrong, get ready to blow the budget trying to come up with a mid-year solution to fix a potentially catastrophic meltdown. By contrast, software as a service (SaaS) and data storage providers generally offer low initial costs and a recurring fee that's easy to budget for — and largely consistent over time. Weigh the numbers over a medium-term timeline and the business case for the cloud makes itself.

Security

Though data breaches still occur to companies big and small worldwide, few IT professionals fear the cloud like they once did. The majority of today's vulnerabilities derive from human error: employees susceptible to phishing schemes or leaving behind an unencrypted laptop in a taxi. Though bigger risks are commonplace in tech- or financial-related industries, in 2017, storing data off-premises for most firms is not adding a significantly larger risk to data security.

Uptime

Similarly, in 2017, uptime and connectivity is and will rarely continue to be an issue. The recent high-profile stumble by Amazon Web Services was a colossal blunder that some analysts believe is giving the likes of IBM and Oracle a prime opportunity to gain market share. But this hiccup was mostly that: a short lack of connectivity that was largely unprecedented in terms of scale and duration. By and large, the idea that your firm will have to deal with any substantial outages where data is inaccessible is an outdated manner of thinking.

Communications

Cloud providers are now offering advanced communications systems that can push forward any organization's capabilities. In particular, when it comes to implementing a customer service center, there are ample benefits in making the switch. Not only are cloud-based communication systems more cost effective — and often more reliable — than on-premise systems, but they can lead to better customer satisfaction scores given the omnichannel support options. Really, it's an easy sell: there is much more power at your fingertips when using today's top-caliber cloud-based communications.

Ongoing Improvement

The cloud of 2017 is light-years beyond where the world was in 2007 — and this is only going to continue to advance as technology gets cheaper, more investments are made in this sector, and the leading providers grow in maturity. Oracle is one company that's investing its profits back into its infrastructure and employee. Oracle is expected to make a larger bet on pushing forward its so-called "infrastructure as a service" offering to give customers even more access to the computing power contained in its systems. And this is just one example. Many other similar investments are underway.

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