By now, you will have certainly heard of the cloud and how it is rapidly taking over the internet. An online-based platform which stores and shares data via a network of servers on the internet instead of on a computer’s hard drive or other physical storage method, cloud computing is designed to facilitate access to your files, infrastructure and applications at any time and from anywhere.
With recent surveys suggesting that almost 100% of UK-based SMEs will adapt cloud services over the next few years, it’s no surprise that it has been one of the most revolutionary IT advancements for more than a decade.
Cost Management.
Cloud-based services such as Claritum can prove very cost effective, especially for those businesses who do not want to make an upfront investment in hardware and software. Businesses can use the cloud to reduce their capital costs and can benefit from an instalment or subscription type payment model, with the requirement to only pay for what you use, allowing you to easily scale up and down along with increasing or decreasing business demand. Depending on the size of your business, using the cloud could also reduce the amount that you spend on energy and power, with no need to have physical servers on-site.
Convenience.
In today’s world, we’re trying harder than ever to improve our work-life balance and the cloud has immensely helped when it comes to evening this out. Cloud computing has enabled more employees than ever to work away from the office, whether this be on a full-time basis or just on certain days. All that’s required to get to work when using the cloud is a good internet connection. This has had a number of great benefits for employees who’ve been able to return to work earlier since having a child, or work and earn money whilst travelling. This has improved flexibility rates for employees immensely, with companies that have switch to using the cloud seeing a 59% improvement rate when it comes to productivity.
Better Recruiting Options.
With the cloud giving employees and freelancers the option to work from anywhere, there is now the opportunity for employees to recruit talent from a much wider talent pool. No longer are businesses restricted to only finding talented potential new staff members in their local area; it’s possible to recruit somebody to work for you from the other side of the world if they have the skills and knowledge required to do the job, thanks to the cloud. This is also helping businesses of all sizes cut costs as it’s becoming increasingly more possible to hire freelancers on a pay-per-project basis instead of hiring full time staff on an hourly or monthly wage. Since the cloud can be accessed from anywhere, for some businesses, it’s possible to hire a completely remote workforce without the need for employees to be physically restricted to the office.
Has the cloud benefitted your business? We’d love to hear from you – leave your response in the comments!
