Cloud computing is the availability of IT hardware resources that is available over the internet. Cloud computing replaces the requirement of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centers and servers.
The buying and owning of physical data centers and servers are a large investment for most businesses. This investment can be replaced by the use of IT hardware resources such as technology services, computing power, storage, and databases over the cloud for a fraction of the cost from a cloud provider by subscribing to their pay as you need solution.
According to Gartner, [1] global spending on cloud services reached $260bn in 2018 up from $219.6bn. It’s also growing at a faster rate than the analysts expected. But it’s not entirely clear how much of that demand is coming from businesses that actually want to move to the cloud and how much is being created by vendors who now only offer cloud versions of their products.
Cloud computing also refers to the use of software that is available in the cloud. [2] Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is the delivery of applications-as-a-service, probably the version of cloud computing that most people are used to on a day-to-day basis. The underlying hardware and operating system are irrelevant to the end user, who will access the service via a web browser or app; it is often bought on a per-seat or per-user basis.
The importance of competitive advantage to cloud deployment decisions was underscored by a recent survey by 451 Research [3] underwritten by Microsoft. More than half of the respondents cited factors relating to improving technology quality, helping grow the business and adding capabilities that couldn’t be built internally as their principal reasons for moving to the cloud.
The use of cloud computing will give your business the boost to gain a competitive advantage. Here are some of the benefits that you can take advantage from:
- No more heavily capital investment on IT hardware servers, data centers or other hardware. Subscribe to a cloud provider based upon your requirements.
- The money that you save can be deployed to other areas of your business so that you gain that competitive advantage.
- You may not need an IT department. If you need the IT staff, they can be redeployed to strategic projects.
- A lower repair and maintenance expense as the cloud provider takes care of this cost.
- No more security issues as the cloud provider has sufficient software to protect your data.
- The cloud provider will back up your data on their hardware systems.
- No more worries about messy software upgrades. Cloud provider will take care of updates.
- Real-time access to financial data using cloud computing software.
- Faster speed to access data.
- Gain advanced customer relationships driven by big data analytics. Businesses can quickly launch new applications in areas such as predictive analytics and customer relationship management that improve revenue-per-customer and point-of-sale upsell opportunities without lengthy installation and configuration processes.
- Businesses can quickly launch new applications in areas such as predictive analytics and customer relationship management that improve revenue-per-customer and point-of-sale upsell opportunities without lengthy installation and configuration processes.
- Companies can use cloud services to add functionality to their ecommerce sites and call centers to yield rapid benefits.
- Multiple cloud services can be integrated with each other to build new products or insights. For example, tweets can be parsed by a sentiment analysis engine and combined with a coupon service to deliver offers to Twitter users who express certain needs or opinions.
- Cloud computing will prevent loss of data.
- Cloud providers have their own disaster recovery systems in place to ensure business continuity.
There are so many more advantages that cloud computing can provide to your business and give you the upper hand against your competitors.
Resource Links
- [1] Source – Computer Weekly – Cloud services sales to hit $260bn this year, says Gartner.
- [2] Source – CloudPro – Two-thirds of enterprises will have multiple clouds and hybrid IT by 2019
- [3] Source – 451 Research: 69% of enterprises will have multi-cloud/hybrid IT environments by 2019,but greater choice brings excessive complexity.
