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10 Advantages You’ll See When You Shift Your Business to the Cloud
What is the biggest benefit of shifting your business to the cloud, and why?
The Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC) is an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.
1. Daily Maintenance
When you shift your IT infrastructure to the cloud, you offload the daily maintenance and administration of your systems to the cloud provider. This leaves your IT staff available to focus on strategic initiatives and other technologies that will have a positive effect on your bottom line.
– Nicole Munoz, Start Ranking Now
2. Data Preservation
It’s easy to create layers and layers of backups on different networks with everything in the cloud. Server failures and natural disasters have happened, but we’ve built so many redundancies that they’re no longer that big of a threat. This was possible before everything was in the cloud, but now it’s no longer a big hassle or expense.
3. Freedom and Flexibility
For millennials in particular, flexibility is key. Having the freedom to work from virtually any location while still being able to access all company files and information allows employees to work in a way that fosters a productive environment.
– Richard Lorenzen, Fifth Avenue Brands
4. Assured Continuity and Security
Data safety, security and continuity. Shifting to the cloud means data is safe in highly secure data centers where physical access is limited and enterprise-level security protocols are standard. The data is also be decentralized and distributed, meaning that there would be no single point of failure in the case of some catastrophic event.
– Russell Kommer, eSoftware Associates Inc
5. Lower Infrastructure Costs
The cloud provides significantly lower IT infrastructure costs. You likely wouldn’t build your own furniture unless you needed it custom designed for you, so why build your own servers or email systems? Additionally, cloud providers typically improve their products every year, leveraging their customers’ economy of scale.
6. Ability to Share with Others
It makes sharing work and collaborating so much easier, including the ability to work on the same draft at the same time and see real-time updates and revisions. This also saves time and confusion in terms of what draft we are on and who has received it.
7. Credibility and Peace of Mind
Particularly for companies working in regulated or security-sensitive industries such as healthcare or finance, closing enterprise-level agreements involves extensive review and intense scrutiny. Using secure hosting services like Armor means questions about HITRUST, PCI and HIPAA are easier to answer, and your stack will be simpler to manage as well.
– Blake Marggraff, Epharmix, Inc.
8. Constant Updates
With cloud-based software you are always operating off of the latest version. Application updates are made frequently to increase functionality and solve pain points, and they are immediately available to users. Traditional software may roll out a new version once a year and oftentimes it’s offered at a cost to the consumer.
– Hillary Hobson, Highest Cash Offer
9. Freedom to Experiment
Cloud infrastructure can be deployed immediately with no risk. Unlike the old days, server and network infrastructure doesn’t require a huge capital investment. Startups can throw up servers and pull them down just as quickly, making it easy to scale, experiment, and move quickly from development to production. The cloud brings enterprise-class infrastructure to everyone with a business idea.
– Justin Blanchard, ServerMania Inc.
10. No Single Point of Failure
By running our business on the cloud we remove the risk of downtime should something happen at our office. Burglary, theft, power outages, lost laptops and internet failures can cause downtime. By running all of our tools on the cloud, we are always running no matter what happens at our location.
– Diego Orjuela, Cables & Sensors
The post 10 Advantages You’ll See When You Shift Your Business to the Cloud appeared first on SmallBizTechnology.
Ramon Ray, Editor & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com
http://www.twitter.com/ramonray | http://www.facebook.com/smallbiztechnology [email protected]
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Source: http://www.smallbiztechnology.com/archive/2017/03/10-advantages-youll-see-when-you-shift-your-business-to-the-cloud.html/
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