Would moving to the cloud work for your business?

Would moving to the cloud work for your business?

So you're a small to medium sized business and you're using traditional hardware based systems to run your business. Like many other businesses of the same size, you're running a tight ship where the margins are fine.

In the back of your mind you're often apprehensive about what the consequences would be, financially and operationally, if something was to go wrong with your supposedly trusty equipment.

You have a workforce increasingly keen to work more flexibly, but you want to make sure they will have the necessary tools available to do so.

Further down the line you anticipate growth and plan to create new jobs and expand your business, but the costs associated with achieving this are holding you back and making you hesitate pushing forward.

Fear not, there is an alternative...

'Working in the cloud' has become one of the biggest buzz phrases in the IT and technology industries today, with organisations of all sizes making the leap into the cloud to benefit from the advantages it brings in a modern working environment, as we explain below.

Hardware? What hardware?

When a business moves to the cloud it rids itself of all that hardware which is expensive to purchase and maintain. Subsequently the resources saved from this can then be put into different areas of the business, which is especially appealing to organisations with limited budgets.

It means you no longer require multiple and/or dedicated engineering teams tasked with coming out to fix a problem with your hardware should one occur, because in the cloud all this is taken care of on your behalf, so your sole focus can be running your business.

This means you don't even need to worry about upgrades, security patches or resilience, because this is done for you. The issue of finding space in the office for large pieces of hardware is even eliminated, which can affect the decision making when it comes to finding suitable premises.

Forget the headaches, expanding is made easy and stress free

Most businesses have ambitions to grow and make more money, but with expansion comes logistical headaches – or at least it does with hardware based systems where the costs to move and purchase new equipment can be substantial and the process lengthy.

On top of that you aren't tasked with waiting around for and paying engineers to come out and install equipment, and then potentially having to do this again at a later date if something breaks or there's a problem with your hardware.

Working in the cloud facilitates businesses to expand with just a simple account upgrade, often with little or no additional charge. Businesses can easily add to their workforce without having to invest in further infrastructure, while account changes and updates can take just minutes rather than days or weeks.

If flexibility is what you want, flexibility is what you'll get

The cloud enables businesses to quickly adapt to meet changing demands, for example in the event of company expansion as explained above.

Meanwhile, providing they have internet access, your whole organisation can work from anywhere at any time giving you, your employees and wider business newfound geographic independence.

This can go a long way to positively impact your employees' happiness by facilitating a favourable work-life balance – and you know what they say: a happy workforce is a productive one!