The 2 Main Factors Driving the Rush to the Cloud – Innovation & Efficiency
In today’s intensely competitive business landscape, more and more companies are migrating their IT environment to the cloud to gain the many benefits of cloud computing. While increased security, reliability and scalability are often cited as key reasons for adopting the cloud – two motivating factors have risen above the rest – cloud innovation and efficiency.
From servers and storage, to applications, software, analytics and more, organizations are moving IT to the cloud in hopes of getting that extra edge over their competitors. But can the cloud truly provide major gains in a variety of areas? Read on to learn how the cloud is delivering significant increases in efficiency and innovation that are boosting data insights, enabling better resource management, enhancing key decision-making and more.
Efficiency Goes Hand in Hand with the Cloud
Reduced Hardware and Operational Costs
Rather than laying out thousands of dollars to purchase their own equipment and systems, companies can choose to outsource via an OpEx model — offered by many cloud providers — in which customers pay a fixed, recurring (usually monthly) cost for cloud hosting and storage. This not only avoids huge and typically sudden capital outlays, it also saves on operational costs since maintenance and upgrades can be managed by the cloud service provider.
Another important area to keep in mind is energy costs. With power rates rising in many parts of the country, the additional operational expense to run servers and applications for in-house cloud can be considerable. Outsourcing enables companies to tap into the pooled energy resources, and typically lower energy costs, offered by cloud providers.
Better IT Resource Allocation
Due to the flexibility provided by the cloud, businesses can scale their computing resources up or down on demand. This avoids overprovisioning of IT resources during periods of low demand, which cuts costs, while also ensuring resources are available during spikes in usage.
Enhanced IT Team Utilization
Instead of bogging down internal IT teams with cloud migration, monitoring and management, quality cloud providers can provide highly skilled engineers to supplement in-house talent – as little or as much as needed. This frees up internal staff to focus on key business initiatives and also helps businesses avoid the time, expense and challenges of finding and retaining deeply experienced IT professionals skilled in the latest developments in cloud computing.
Cloud Compliance
Ensuring that your organization has the required cloud compliance certifications is key and can be time-consuming, particularly since some certifications require annual renewal. This prompts many organizations to align with a compliant cloud provider, whereby the service provider is responsible for ensuring cloud compliance certifications which also cover their hosted organizations.
Efficient and Professionally Managed Disaster Recovery
By moving to a quality cloud provider, businesses gain access to best-in-class backup and disaster recovery technology that might be too expensive for an individual organization to buy outright. Coupled with the specialized expertise of cloud providers, organizations can ensure their data is protected, IT systems are up and a solid data recovery plan is in place.
The Cloud Brings Numerous Innovations
Remote Working
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed remote working to a never-before-seen level in extremely short order. In fact, a 2020 survey of executives by McKinsey and Company indicated that companies adopted digital or digitally enabled products within one year that otherwise would’ve taken seven years to achieve. Cloud expansion factored significantly into that digital enablement and continues to play a key role today by enabling employees to access and share files and documents anywhere at any time.
Easier Access to Business Intelligence & AI Tools
The importance of data and the value of harvesting it for key business insights cannot be overstated. Known as Business Intelligence (BI), more and more businesses today are employing the power of BI to give their organizations a competitive edge. Increasingly, businesses are accessing those tools via the cloud.
In fact, in 2021, more than 55% of organizations noted that cloud BI was either “critical” or “very important” to their business, according to a study by Dresner Advisory Services.
The cloud is also providing greater use of artificial intelligence tools, which use machine learning and algorithms to automatically generate insights for end users. AI’s predictive abilities have proven to be extremely valuable, particularly in industries where forecasting outcomes is very beneficial, such as logistics, healthcare, cybersecurity, financial services and R&D.
Greater Staff Collaboration & Productivity
A huge number of cloud-based tools and apps have emerged to help teams efficiently collaborate. Statistics show that an increasing number of workers are using one or more collaboration tools – such as Zoom, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and Skype – in their day-to-day business activities. In fact, in a 2021 Gartner survey of over 10,000 employees at companies with 100 or more employees in the U.S., Europe and Asia-Pacific, nearly 80% of workers reported using collaboration tools for work. The tools foster a greater exchange of information, data and ideas and are being credited with increased teamwork, innovation and productivity.
In summary, the cloud is providing access to innovative new applications and services to businesses of all sizes and types as well as fueling improved operational efficiencies and savings on capital expenses. LightEdge has been providing secure cloud and colocation for nearly 30 years, offering customers high performing and flexible multi, hybrid and private cloud options.
As an MSP, LightEdge does more than just provide enterprise cloud services. We serve as a strategic partner, unraveling the complexity of enterprise cloud computing. By partnering with LightEdge, organizations gain access to a team of experts who can guide them through the intricacies of cloud adoption, from initial planning to ongoing management. We enable businesses to achieve the improved efficiency and innovation with a service-first approach.
If you’d like to learn more about how LightEdge’s experienced team unravels the complexity of enterprise cloud and helps organizations achieve peak performance, please click here or contact us.
