MailGuard partners with hundreds of IT providers around the globe. Businesses often turn to our trusted partners to leverage their superior IT knowledge. A question our IT partners get asked a lot revolves around whether their clients should move all or part of their on-premise systems, applications and servers to the cloud.
The question might look like this example below:
My organisation currently has an in-house server running 2003 and we are considering whether to upgrade or move to the cloud. I do find the internal maintenance and management of our server quite time-consuming and I think my IT time and resources could be better spent elsewhere. I'm also concerned that with only one in-house server we run the risk of having only one single point of failure. What is my best option?
This is not an uncommon question at all. In a technology-based world there are two types of businesses - those who have moved part or all of their systems to the cloud, and those that haven't. Businesses currently utilising cloud laud the positive changes it has made to the everyday running of their business, whilst those that haven't made the switch or don't believe in moving their enterprise to cloud, lament about the issues that implementing cloud technology could possibly create for their businesses.
Individual IT professionals may have their own opinions on cloud, however the IT industry as a whole is embracing cloud technology, and they are already seeing the enhancements cloud is making to business.
Whether customers simply don't want to weigh into all the hype or they just prefer doing business 'the old fashioned way', the implementation of cloud across all industries is growing. Global Technology Outlook: Cloud 2014: A More Disruptive Phase predicts that by 2016, a quarter of all applications (around 48 million) will be available in the cloud.
Figures released by research company IDC also indicate that 85% of new software is currently built with cloud in mind, and so by 2020, nearly 40% of the information in the digital universe will be ‘touched’ by cloud computing. In fact, businesses and industries that fail to move to the cloud, run the risk of being left behind in the 'technological' dust as more and more companies have improved and faster, technology, information and services available at their fingertips through cloud.
Cloud is definitely not just a technology fad (by its very nature it's impossible for it to ever sit on your shelf collecting dust), so it is no surprise that the World Economic Forum described cloud as the next wave of information technology becoming the driving force behind individuals, companies and governments.
These statistics show the reality of a technological future, and explain why IT providers should be pointing their clients towards cloud, and away from more traditional hardware, software and services.
With cloud providers taking care of server needs, IT professionals within businesses are able to redeploy their in-demand resources. There are also many more practical and financial benefits to having part or all of your services delivered or managed in the cloud. MailGuard has previously discussed these in the article The Real Cost of Moving to the Cloud.
One of the biggest concerns that remains for clients converting to the cloud is the privacy and security of their data. This paranoia comes from the long-held belief that traditional on-premise servers are more secure over data stored in the cloud because businesses have complete control over their own servers and storage, therefore taking responsibility for their own privacy and data security. While this sounds ideal in theory, businesses generally don't have the capacity or IT resources to fully meet their compliance and security requirements.
The reality is for professional cloud service providers, privacy and security is a vital component of their cloud solutions. Cloud solutions are generally deployed from secure and geographically dispersed data centres with redundancy a given. Furthermore, cloud providers will have built their services with enhanced security capabilities that allow for the highest level of protection and threat analysis, updated automatically 24/7. Some of these companies include Salesforce, Zimbra, Amazon Web Services, and of course MailGuard. Cloud security experts fill in the knowledge gap missing in some IT departments, and by doing so help businesses to mitigate online security risks much more effectively. For a more in-depth look at service support in the cloud, take a look at Why Good Cloud Service Support Is Important For Your Business.
With cloud technology opening up a whole new world of innovation and business possibilities, these are just some of the many reasons why a business should consider moving some or all of their servers or services off-premise and to the cloud. As cloud security experts, MailGuard is always on hand to help IT providers and their clients navigate the cloud for email security and privacy.
Talk to the MailGuard team today about cloud email filtering and our other cloud services, or take a look at the Reasons Why Businesses Love MailGuard.
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