More and more businesses are moving quite a large percentage of their services/business processes/applications to the cloud. Some are using the public cloud, while others who are more concerned about their data security and who don’t want to lose control over their processes are using the private cloud; and there are still others who are using a mixture of the public and private cloud called the hybrid cloud.

While small businesses are actually moving to the cloud lock stock and barrel, medium and enterprise level organizations are choosing to move only the less mission critical systems to the cloud. This ensures they are still in control of their most sensitive data. The cloud improves business efficiency, controls overheads and brings a plethora of benefits to the table. No wonder then that global business spending on the cloud and infrastructure services related to it is all set to touch a massive $174 billion this year.

If your business is not leveraging the immense range of cloud benefits, it should begin doing so immediately. Why? Let’s take a look:

The Benefit of Scalability

Your business’s main frame server might be able to store only a limited amount of data, but not so the cloud servers. The remote servers of this service have a huge capacity meaning they can meet the growing demands of your business. This scalability is what makes cloud such a popular choice for businesses. They can incorporate new processes or a new cutting edge application and still keep their legacy application in play, without burdening their existing bandwidth offered by on site data servers. They can access these applications or processes from the cloud.

More Flexibility and Agility

Even the best businesses fail to come good when it comes to flexibility and agility. In fact, the flexibility of a business is a subset of its agility. Every business needs to change and adapt to the changing needs of the market. For example, customers need businesses to be more engaged with them and that too on a personal basis. As can be imagined, for that to happen, they must have resources to spare and work in an ecosystem that makes them more attuned to engage better with their customers. This can happen if certain processes are taken to the cloud, thus freeing up their time to indulge in revenue generation activities such as forging better customer relationships and offering better customer service.

Increased Collaboration

Today, business decisions have to be made on the go. You will lose valuable time if you cannot sync up to critical business data, when you are out of the office and you need this data to assess a particular situation and come up with a decision. This is where cloud computing enters the picture as it allows you to improve collaboration, allowing people to access data from wherever they are.

This is of significance not only if you are on the move, but in case the offices of your business are spread across different locations. The cloud is also an important collaboration technology that ensures data can be accessed from anywhere at any time.

You needn’t worry about setting tiers of accessibility to this data as you can ensure only the people who need the data on the cloud have access to it. This is one of the biggest reasons why at least some aspects of your business need to be migrated to the Cloud.

Allows you Tap into the Human Cloud

The best talent comes at a price. And businesses cannot ignore working with such talent. But the problem is they are caught between trying to control their overheads and working with the best talent. Cloud computing offers a solution in this regard as well as many talented professionals have taken to the cloud to offer their services. They are using the cloud to work on client projects, which is a win-win situation for them and the client. These professionals can work on projects of their choice. These are the kind of projects that challenge the limits of their expertise, and clients (that is your business) can get the advantage of using a talent who works remotely. You free up office space as a result that can be put to other use and more importantly you can hire talent on a per-project basis.

The Cost Benefit

The problem with benefits is that there is always some price to pay for them and at times some of the more profitable advantages require major initial investment. Not so with the cloud. With cloud computing you can use the pay-as-you-use model that only charges you for the amount of storage space/bandwidth you use. This makes the cloud computing a very affordable way of giving your business the edge that it will need. What’s more, you can scale up or down your use of the cloud as you see fit. You have no compulsion to continue with cloud computing if you think it’s not delivering the results you are looking for.

To Conclude

These aren’t the only benefits you can experience with the cloud. What cloud computing does is that it makes it simpler for your business to grow. By placing a part of your IT infrastructure and processes in the cloud, what you are essentially doing is giving your business activities more space to grow and perform. At the end of the day, this is what matters, irrespective of the various other benefits that the cloud brings to the table. This is why even the biggest businesses are swearing by the Cloud. It’s time that you did so too!