Gone are the days where the cheapest and easiest way for a business to manage its IT needs is with a large-scale, in-house infrastructure; in its place is the cloud.
The shift to the cloud has intensified in the past few years as businesses realise the significant benefits in using cloud applications.
Below are five of the major advantages:
1. Scalability
Scalability refers to an application’s ability to meet an expected level of capacity for a business. The cloud allows business owners to quickly and easily scale their resources to manage any number of users. Whether it’s one hundred, one thousand or ten thousand users, applications in the cloud can be scaled accordingly – either up or down - to meet the company’s needs. This is most effective for small to mid-sized businesses who may want to re-evaluate their planned levels of capacity more frequently.
2. No hardware or software
Users of cloud applications access them over a network, usually via a web-browser, which means there is no hardware or software required. Businesses are able to avoid the costly process of setting up infrastructure as well as providing constant maintenance. Instead, this is all managed by the cloud service provider; allowing businesses to focus on their own projects.
3. Predictable costs
Most cloud service providers offer either a per-user, per-month contract, or 36 month contract, which gives business owners the ability to easily forecast their expenses. In addition, cloud users only pay for the service they use which eliminates any unnecessary costs associated with housing your own infrastructure. In a survey conducted by Management Insight Technologies it was found that almost 80% of IT executives prefer the cloud because it either saves money or because the costs are predictable.
4. Data security better than in-house
In the survey above a large portion of executives voiced concerns regarding data security in the cloud. However, contrary to popular belief, cloud applications are actually less likely to have security issues than in-house infrastructure. This is because cloud providers typically have more resources to invest in protecting your data.
5. Intuitive user experience
Cloud applications are notoriously easy to use because integration usually occurs automatically and is managed by the service provider. Furthermore, all the information is stored in the cloud which means it can be accessed from anywhere there is an internet connection. At MailGuard we even offer users the ability to access their email in the event of a primary mail server outage through our MailGuard Live service.
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