Thursday, 10 July 2014 Blog ehdf

What Can The Cloud Do For Small Businesses?

Here are 7 benefits of the cloud for small businesses:

Data Backup: One of the common problems for a small business is ensuring their data is secure and fully protected from loss/misuse. With cloud, data can be backed up on the go. Data also gets stored at an offsite location which ensures it remains protected from any disasters or disruptions.

Anytime-anywhere access: Data stored on the cloud can be accessed from anytime and anywhere, even through mobile devices. At any point of time, data is accessible with a secured login and can be updated. With cloud, you can take your office with you anywhere you go and data will be synced automatically. This also enables effective sharing of data with colleagues or customers and makes cloud appropriate for small businesses to expand and grow.

Reduced costs: Cloud helps reduce costs for an IT team because of the virtualized infrastructure and shared IT resources. As cloud is scalable, there is minimal or no upfront cost and the service can be customised to your specific needs and scaled up or down when needed.

Time saving: Setting up and maintaining an in house server takes a considerable amount of time. With cloud, since everything is virtualized, configuring a cloud takes minutes. Also – there are several servers and data centers being used so if one fails another is activated.

High scalability: Since cloud resources are offered on demand, any changes in capacity can be easily handled.

Reduced downtime: Cloud usually involves a vast network of servers; this means that even if a single server completely fails, the load is simply distributed among the remaining servers thus eliminating ‘server downtime’.

Low Maintenance: Since cloud is hosted off site, the responsibility of maintaining the server falls on the service provider and not on internal IT teams.

Cloud empowers you to expand your business, compete better in the market and drive efficiencies and productivity, all at a lower cost.