How to Decide if Cloud is Right for your Business

The cloud is a disruptive trend that has been gaining momentum for some time. However, it seems that many businesses are still confused on where cloud computing can fit in for their business initiatives. Though it may sound like a complex concept, cloud computing simply means that your data is housed offsite in someone else’s data center (unless your company owns its own private cloud).

Why shift to the Cloud?

Companies that choose to shift to the cloud do so for a number of reasons. The benefits of flexibility, scalability, cost savings, etc. are weighed against availability concerns (which are easily addressed by the cloud provider’s SLA). There are also a variety of use cases that companies may choose to deploy, including: Backup, Disaster Recovery, Test/Dev, etc.

Making the move to the cloud has benefits for companies of all sizes. For small and medium businesses that cannot afford capital intensive infrastructure, the cloud is affordable, easier to deploy, and simple to manage. Making the investment does not require large amounts of capital or lengthy provisioning. For enterprises with strict timelines, this means that projects can get off the ground faster and time to market can be cut in half.

Evaluating your Business Needs

It is important to evaluate if cloud is right for you from a strategic and operational perspective. Does your demand for IT vary throughout the year? Are the costs of your IT impacting your ability to grow as a business? If so you may consider a cloud option that can be easily scaled.

You should also evaluate your current IT set-up to understand the benefits of moving to the cloud, especially in the following areas:

• Service – how important are security, reliability and flexibility to your business? Is your current solution meeting your needs? Is there room for improvement?
• Technology landscape – how many business users are there? What is the geographic distribution of your user base? Do your employees require remote access?
• Cost – Are you satisfied with the costs of your on premises solution? Are the costs to scale up or upgrade services acceptable?
• Ease of migration – when did you last invest in significant capital expenditure? Do you have any contractual and vendor commitments that constrain migration?

Answering these questions can help to understand if cloud is a good fit for your business.

When Cloud Makes Sense

Its true, you may find that cloud is not the right fit for your business. But in most cases, companies will benefit significantly from a shift to the cloud. Here are some situations in which moving to the cloud makes sense:

When you can’t afford on-premises solutions – the cloud is a great, affordable, alternative to on-premises infrastructure

When your on-premises solution is outdated and needs to be updated – rather than paying extended support or investing in new hardware, save money and make a cloud investment.

When your IT staff is smaller – managing in-house IT requires a lot of expertise on hand. Instead, outsource services to a cloud provider and don’t worry about hiring more IT staff.

When you need to spin up an environment quickly – the beauty of the cloud is that environments can be quickly spun up and torn down, making test and dev easy!

When you need a backup or DR solution in place – because the cloud is so easy to deploy, you can quickly put business critical solutions in place that can prevent catastrophic data loss and more!

For more situations where the cloud makes sense, or to discuss your business’s needs, contact us!