If you’re weighing why to move to the cloud, the case has never been stronger. The days of storing your critical data in your own IT environment are over. Cloud adoption continues to accelerate across industries as organizations look to cut infrastructure costs, improve security, and give their teams reliable access to data from anywhere.
With its many benefits, the cloud is quickly gaining favor, and will continue to expand rapidly. In fact, in a recent report, Gartner forecasted spending on cloud services will grow 20.7% to reach $591.8 billion in 2023, up from $490.3 billion in 2022. And that’s even higher than the 18.8% growth forecast for the previous year.
As data use continues to skyrocket, relying on in-house computer servers is unrealistic and even unsafe. Consequently, the cloud has become a strategic imperative for many organizations.
Moving to the cloud will change the way you run your business for the better. Cloud systems not only offer savings and increase productivity and scalability, but they make your business more agile. Additionally, they can even help you conquer many modern business challenges, from data losses and duplicated information to devastating security breaches.
10 Reasons Why Organizations Move to the Cloud
Here are 10 cloud benefits that explain why the shift is worth making.
1. Data Security Expertise You Can Trust
Every CIO’s worst nightmare is a security breach. The consequences can be devastating, and can set your company back significantly in revenue, customer trust, brand reputation, and productivity. However, when you implement a cloud solution, you get top-notch security far beyond what your own environment can likely provide.
Your IT staff is overloaded with a myriad of essential matters, with security being just one of them. The cloud can relieve them of this burden by taking over security duties. This means IT staff no longer risk missing a security threat while attending to other responsibilities. With cloud providers like Hyland you get access to a team of security specialists dedicated to monitoring security 24/7/365. Cloud providers also constantly evaluate and evolve their practices to protect customer data as effectively as possible. For example, the Hyland Cloud’s data centers and cloud management services are routinely audited and certified by an independent party for optimal security standards.
Additionally, when your solution is hosted in the cloud, local network problems are less likely to affect solution reliability and performance thanks to geographical disbursement. Plus, storing and backing up your data in geographically diverse locations increases its protection even further. And, extra bonus, doing so also offers enhanced protection to your solutions themselves.
2. Gain Peace of Mind with Rapid Disaster Recovery
From power outages to natural disasters, catastrophes can strike at any moment, disrupting your business in the process. While you can’t prevent such occurrences, you can set yourself up for a smoother, faster recovery. Cloud-based enterprise solutions can get you back to business as usual sooner due to cloud’s resource offerings that make it easy to replicate content in multiple locations. They also help your organization to get your vital systems back up and running quickly.
Another primary concern of organizations is data loss. Whether a device gets a virus, deteriorates from age, experiences a user error, or gets stolen, the data is easily retrieved if it’s stored in the cloud.
3. Save Money Without Sacrificing Quality
Hosting your solution on-premises isn’t just risky, it’s an expensive operation. However, in the cloud, you can save money by reducing your Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Your cloud service provider becomes responsible for the continued updates and maintenance that allow your system to perform at full capacity. As a result, you can see reductions in various operational expenses, including overtime, maintenance, staffing, and physical security. Cloud systems also rarely experience downtime, with the Hyland Cloud historically offering 99.9% uptime, which means you won’t have to spend time or money on fixing downtime-related issues.
With cloud systems, you don’t have to sacrifice solution or service quality to save money. Cloud service providers continually work to evolve and improve their technology and services. By partnering with them, your organization benefits from these advancements at no additional cost. This way, you will always be working with the latest, cutting-edge technology. You can get more tips on how to maximize your cloud savings here.
4. Faster Incident Response
Slower incident response can be costly by increasing both compliance fines and customer dissatisfaction. Fortunately, larger-scale systems like the cloud offer more efficient incident response capabilities and faster response time than in-house systems. This cloud benefit allows your team to resume business as usual sooner.
5. Data Availability for Better Productivity
The cloud also offers 24/7 data availability thanks to increased uptime of service. In addition, cloud solutions offer mobile access to data. This feature ensures that your employees can access the information they need within just a few clicks, from anywhere. With easy, immediate access to the data employees need, they can perform their jobs efficiently and productivity can flourish.
6. A Solution That Scales & Evolves with You
As your business expands and changes over time, so do your data storage needs. Cloud allows you to scale your solution up or down according to business demands. Cloud systems have the flexibility to grow with you and can accommodate the storage requirements for any business size. This cloud benefit frees you from undergoing pricey, time-consuming updates to your IT infrastructure to increase bandwidth. Finally, cloud systems even allow users to customize applications to fit their needs seamlessly.
7. Reliable Quality Control
For many businesses, offering reliable, high-quality service or product is of the utmost concern. Cloud can support this initiative by ensuring all documents exist in a single location in a single format. As a result, it eliminates document duplication – a common barrier to quality control. Additionally, when all your employees can access the same data, your data consistency increases while human error and confusion decrease. You also gain access to a detailed record of changes or updates which adds a valuable layer of transparency.
8. Supports Collaboration & Remote Workers
Cloud systems allow team members to work simultaneously on the same infrastructure, eliminating the stress and wasted time of waiting your turn to access a file. Given this ability, team members can both view and share information easily and securely. Changes to files, data, and documents also sync in real-time. And the presence of cloud roles and permissions provides greater transparency into what actions occur and by which employees.
Cloud systems also ensure business continuity when your workers are remote. This technology seamlessly connects remote employees with fast, reliable, and secure access to data and corporate applications. With these affordances, remote staff have all the tools needed to remain productive from any location. Further, easy collaboration with cloud systems can increase remote employee participation and combat the feelings of isolation remote employees may experience.
9. Quick & Easy Deployment
Cloud solutions are also quick to deploy. While in-house technology updates can take several days, if not weeks, to deploy, cloud systems can be up and running in only a few days. You can cut to the benefits of cloud sooner and with fewer headaches.
10. Automatic Software Updates
When you host in the cloud, your system will always be up to date. Cloud service providers are constantly improving their software and service and offer regular updates to keep your solution cutting edge. This benefit allows you to focus on business goals and customer satisfaction rather than worrying about updates and infrastructure problems.
Frequently Asked Cloud Questions
Why should businesses move to the cloud?
Businesses move to the cloud to reduce infrastructure costs, improve data security, and give teams reliable access to data from anywhere. Cloud providers maintain dedicated security teams and automatic software updates that most in-house IT environments can’t match, making cloud migration a strategic advantage rather than just a cost decision.
What are the biggest benefits of moving to the cloud?
The biggest benefits of moving to the cloud include stronger data security, faster disaster recovery, lower total cost of ownership, automatic software updates, and the ability to scale storage up or down as business needs change. Organizations also gain improved collaboration capabilities and 24/7 data availability for remote and distributed teams.
Is it worth moving to the cloud for a small business?
Yes. Cloud solutions are highly scalable, meaning small businesses pay for what they need and can grow their storage and capabilities without expensive infrastructure upgrades. The security, uptime, and disaster recovery capabilities available through cloud providers were previously only accessible to large enterprises, making cloud migration one of the most cost-effective technology decisions a small business can make.
Don’t Wait to Gain your Competitive Advantage with Cloud Benefits
The organizations that move to the cloud gain a compounding advantage over those that wait. Better security, lower overhead, and faster access to data are not future benefits; they’re available now. The sooner you implement the cloud, the sooner you can enjoy greater efficiency, savings, flexibility, and productivity enterprise-wide, all while knowing that your data couldn’t be in better hands.
If you’re ready to explore what cloud migration looks like for your organization, talk to a Naviant specialist or explore Naviant’s cloud solutions to learn more.
