If you’re a business owner thinking of adopting the cloud for your enterprise, you’ll be interested in what exactly it can do. Here are just some of the benefits that thousands of enterprises have reaped from cloud computing.
Storage and Disaster Recovery
IDC surveys have shown that apart from their usual physical backup, 65% of companies use cloud-based storage for their data. The reasons are clear: cloud technology provides not just a flexible capacity for storage but also multiple redundancies. Not only does this make cloud data easily available online, it also makes it quicker to recover from unforeseen disasters—hackers, fire, machine failure, earthquakes, etc.
Disaster recovery is a major concern, since about 80% of business would lose about $20,000 an hour or more during downtime and the latter 20% losing upwards of $100,000. But statistics have shown that cloud users can recover from disasters about 4 times faster than non-cloud users.
Condé Nast is a prime example of a company using cloud storage, with about 1 petabyte of data hosted with Amazon Web Services.
Application Development
Through PaaS, cloud technology makes it easier, faster and more cost-effective to build applications in the cloud. PaaS removes the problem of buying, setting up and maintaining the underlying hardware and software need for building and testing applications. It is also allows developers to share resources and lets them move applications into market quicker, giving the company a higher edge against competitors. As such, both Best Buy and Qantas have adopted the cloud to create their web applications.
Data Analysis
Nowadays, enterprises need to keep their ear on the ground when it comes to determining trends. Some companies need to analyze up to 1 terabyte a day to predict customer behavior. As such, big companies like Etsy and Kellog’s turn to cloud computing for predictive analytics. Not only is it quick and effective, it also frees up resources they could spend on other productive activities, such as R&D and marketing.
Flexibility and Elasticity
Cloud technology also solves the tricky problem of growth and usage, specifically meeting sudden surges in demand. Formerly, one had to expend a large amount of upfront capital to create a data center big enough to handle growth or a surge in usage. The scalable nature of the cloud does away with that problem. Should there be a sudden (and temporary) growth in user demand, the cloud service provider can provision more resources to handle it. Should usage dip, it is possible to scale these resources back. That’s why Netflix and Instagram use the cloud to handle varying levels of user traffic while maintaining only a relatively small staff.
Collaboration
Being net-based, cloud computing facilitates collaboration like no other technology before it. Collaboration software such as Huddle or Google Docs lets co-workers share and access data from anywhere around the globe they can go online. Frost & Sullivan discovered that enterprises which invested in collaboration technology garnered a 400% return on investment.
Given the above benefits, it’s no surprise that cloud computing is the trend to beat in the IT industry. If you wish to look into cloud adoption, take some time consult with a certified cloud strategist here at PolarSeven.
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