Why Cloud Managed Services are Right for SMBs

Date posted: 24th September 2015

The cloud has provided competitive advantage companies of all sizes, causing a significant reduction in time-to-market within the IT sector and business as a whole. Previously, companies went to great lengths to scale their own in-house IT infrastructure, as it was seen as more secure to run the business through technology maintained on-site. Now however, there is a push toward an online public cloud service delivery model, leaving organizations wondering which setup is best for them.

In many ways, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) stand to benefit the most from cloud-based technologies. Working with limited resources and capital budget, it has not always been easy to for small companies to take full advantage of information technology — the purchase, deployment, maintenance and eventual refresh of data center hardware is quite expensive, not to mention the salaries paid to the specialized professionals or “Value Added Resellers” that maintain it. Fortune 500 enterprise companies can afford this type of capital costs, whereas SMBs have trouble spending that much leaving them at a disadvantage.

But this is starting to change with the emergence of cloud computing and Cloud Managed Services. Instead of procuring hardware and maintaining their IT in-house or through a VAR, the option of Cloud Managed Hosting Services now exists to give SMBs a more cost effective operating expense investment that allows them to focus on their strategic business goals.

So why are Cloud Managed Services right for SMBs?

 

• Lower Costs | Shift Capital Expense to Operating: Cloud-hosted environments enable mass-scale computing power and minimize IT deployments and physical storage, providing a substantial savings. Public cloud solutions are also much faster to deploy than traditional hardware, which also allows businesses to have minimal project start-up costs plus controllable and predictable operating expenses.
• Mobility: As long as employees have access to the Internet, they can work from anywhere/anytime. This allows you to expand workforce wherever they are saving even more money.
• Improved Collaboration: Saving and accessing files through the cloud allows everyone to work with the same set of content, according to access and permission controls implemented by you system administrator or Cloud Managed Services provider.
• Reduces Data Loss Risk: When everything is stored in the cloud, data can still be accessed no matter what happens to a machine. Moreover, the cloud adds security for its users by backing-up data off-site, decreasing the potential for hackers, viruses, and other cyber-security issues.
• Improves Efficiency and Competitive Advantage: After migrating to the cloud, companies should no longer worry about space considerations, power requirements, software updates etc. Using solutions provided by a reliable and presentable cloud service provider gives the ability for SMBs to use the latest solutions on offer in their field, which is giving the small companies the chance to be more competitive.

The cloud enables your IT infrastructure to progress as quickly as your business does. Moving forward with cloud solutions will bring your small business many benefits that at first-hand impact productivity and security. No matter what brunch of business you represent, cloud computing is a practice that you will want to integrate and after all adopt it.