The way businesses do computing has changed dramatically over the last ten years. In 2009, the cloud computing market was about one per cent of its current size, and very few people in business knew what it was. The term “cloud computing” was used just as much as “distributed computing” in early articles by the Harvard Business Review and others as people grappled with the concept.
Today, that’s all changed. Cloud computing provides the backbone for the most innovative and cost-efficient businesses, with very few legacy IT solutions left in the market.
Speaking of the market, it loves the cloud. Forbes says that the cloud computing segment has grown at more than 450 per cent the speed of the overall IT market over the last nine years. But there are still businesses who do not realise its potential, and it’s costing them money.
Here’s why your computing is so expensive, and what you can do about it.
You Are Still Using Legacy Servers
Maintaining legacy servers is expensive. Not only do you have to pay up front all the capital costs, but you also have to employ somebody to service them. Add to that the fact that server components tend to be much more expensive, and you’ve got a recipe for high costs and low productivity.
The good news is that you can now just rent cheap VPS through the cloud. What’s more, you only pay for what you use, and so you can usually manage costs down. And because many server providers have automatic backups, there’s virtually no risk of a catastrophic loss of data.
You Are Paying For Too Many Services
Although the cloud provides tremendous value to businesses, managers themselves don’t always make the right decisions about which services to buy. More often than not, they will see a product, think that it’s a good idea, and sign up. There are dozens of products out there, from chat apps to hiring professional freelancers to monitor your business network. But not all of them provide a genuine return on investment. As such, be clinical when you decide which services your business needs, and which it doesn’t.
You Are Scaling The Old-Fashioned Way
As your business grows, your IT requirements change. You need more computers, accounts, and data storage. Many companies decide that the best thing to do is to go down the old-fashioned route of directly buying more IT equipment and hiring technicians to set it all up. But the smartest managers know that there’s a better way: scaling through the cloud.
Cloud scaling is easy. You just buy a new tablet or notebook for your new hires and then pay for additional accounts, storage or services through the cloud. What’s important here is that the extra cost is marginal and proportional to the scale of your company. It doesn’t matter whether you hire just one person or one hundred new people: the costs will increase accordingly. What’s more, if you ever decide that you need to downsize your workforce or reduce the number of services you use, you can easily cancel accounts and subscriptions through the cloud.