3 ways the cloud can change how you do business

The cloud certainly isn’t a lightweight in your business environment. It’s packed full of benefits that extend far beyond that of cost savings and the reduction of onsite hardware.

In fact, it’s no longer just about cloud benefits. Today, it’s more about how the cloud can actually change the way you do business. 

Companies everywhere are starting to realize just how big an impact the cloud can have on day-to-day operations, and here are three major reasons why.

Mobility

When your business exists inside a cloud, it no longer exists inside a box. Your employees can now benefit from a greater degree of mobility. 

But again, it’s no longer about the benefit itself — this particular benefit isn’t just going to save you some money or reduce a bit of hassle. This degree of mobility can and will change how much and how well your employees work.

Rather than being limited by a desk and four walls, employees can take their work on-the-go. But with the cloud, this on-the-go work is considerably different. 

Employees can access work data and tools from anywhere with any device — meaning they can be just as productive outside the office as they are inside of it. 

Increased mobility has also been linked to advantages like greater employee engagement, sharper competitive edge, and overall better customer service 

IT management 

Sure, the cloud reduces your need for onsite hardware. 

Since parts of your infrastructure are virtualized and hosted offsite by your cloud provider, you don’t need as much stuff

But again, this reduction of hardware goes above and beyond a mere benefit of cloud computing. It changes how you work because your IT-related responsibilities are reduced alongside that reduction in hardware. 

Because of this, many good things can happen. But first and foremost, you can now refocus the time, energy, and money you devoted to maintaining and managing your previous infrastructure toward investing in new business opportunities. 

In this case, you’re not only freeing up physical space inside your business — but you’re freeing up your time, your brain, and your wallet.

Scalability 

A hosted infrastructure provides many benefits beyond that of streamlined IT management — most notable would have to be the simplification of scalability. 

Back in the day, your only option was to play a waiting game. 

If you wanted to grow your business (or even right-size your business), that process requires time, money, and resources. If you didn’t have time, money, and resources to spare, then that wait would suddenly become much longer. 

But with a cloud-based infrastructure, things are flexibly different. 

With virtualized resources, you can scale up or down with ease, and this process is now the responsibility of your cloud provider. You simply tell your provider that you need more or less of something, and they deliver. And sometimes within hours or even minutes.

However, every cloud setup is not created equal. Not only does each cloud provider have their own nuances, but there are also different types of cloud computing platforms. Read up on the differences between public and private cloud to learn more about the various options available in cloud computing.