Making a Case for Cloud and its Disruptive Benefits

In the 1970s, a new technology known as the internet was born in the engineering laboratory of one of the United States’ most famous schools and like most disruptive technologies, its birth was greeted with derision by many in the IT community. Known then as ARPANET which birthed the internet, a columnist for a prominent newspaper went as far as stating that these amiable researchers had no inkling of what they spoke about and the internet does not have the power to change the daily activities of humans.

As with every disruptive technology since the Stone Age, the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 went ahead to prove naysayers wrong by making it easy to make content publicly accessible. Today we rely on the internet to carry out most of our daily tasks.

Once again, society is on the cusp of witnessing another disruptive influence that has the ability to change the course of the business world. Thankfully, the phenomenon known as “cloud” (which includes computing, infrastructure-as-a-service, software-as-a-service and much more) has few doubting its abilities to disrupt the way we conduct business today. And this acceptance can be seen from a Gartner survey that predicted the year 2020 as a one where a no-cloud policy will be non-existent in the corporate world. This means that it is in the best interest of every business owner to truly understand the benefits the ‘cloud’ has to offer.

Optimizing Capital Expenditure

If I asked you how and where do a majority of companies spend the bulk of their IT budgets, your response would definitely include; maintaining IT infrastructure, purchasing and deploying new solutions or payroll. But sadly, you would be wrong on all counts. Statistics from a Gartner expenditure research discovered that a majority of healthcare companies spend 75% of their IT budgets on maintaining internal systems.

You might suggest this is a survey on the healthcare sector and cannot, therefore, account for other industries. Such a train of thought should be considered as fallacious because every industry that is IT-centric, deals with sensitive customer information or is regulated in some way, spends a considerable amount maintaining internal systems. With the advent of cloud-based solutions and a host of managed service providers, business owners can simply leverage the cloud services they require to manage their sensitive resources far more cost effectively. These solutions can also be scaled up or down depending on the load or other requirement in ways previously impossible with onsite infrastructure.

Providing Enhanced Security for Businesses

With established powerhouses like Salesforce, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure spearheading the cloud-based industry, the high-level standards they operate under as well as industry regulations ensure safety measures are always in place. These measures are also regularly updated to counter existing threats and it can be argued that the security measures most managed service providers provide are more secure than you having a dedicated IT manager monitoring your servers.

To also ensure best practices are adhered to when managed services providers deal in securing IT infrastructure, a couple of compliance certifications have been introduced to the industry by both the government and third-party organizations. Compliance certificates such as; ISO 27001, SOC2, SOC3 etc. keep cloud service providers on their toes by ensuring they follow stated guidelines on securing the information of their customers.

Ability to Integrate with Everything

Cloud services also play a stellar role in advancing the internet of things (IOT) by providing easy access to a central resource unit for a plethora of interconnected devices. Today, most cloud services can be connected or integrated into other systems thereby saving your customers time when multiple transactions occur as well as save you some money. Some of the systems that can be tied into the cloud include:

Of course, the list could be hundreds of items long, but these are a few significant benefits. Integrating cloud-based solutions into these systems is a great way for businesses to reduce the time to complete tasks thereby increasing productivity levels while eliminating waste.

Enhances Reliability

A successful business is one whose products and services are always readily available to those who demand it and for IT-centric organizations, maintaining uptime is important to the overall success of the business and the bottom line. This means that business owners must consider all avenues to ensure that their IT platforms are available to all and yield quick results.

Cloud-based traffic management solutions like those offered by Total Uptime provide organizations with a way to maximize uptime, deliver high-performing services while effectively dealing with inevitable service provider or internal infrastructure downtime. These solutions help your business maximize uptime by ensuring that IT infrastructure is always internet-accessible when needed.

Final Thoughts

A disruptive technology is one that has the ability to radically alter an existing market by creating a new way of doing things thereby displacing already established techniques. The integration of cloud-based technologies is sure to disrupt the old way of conducting business as more and more people continue to key into the advantages it provides.