Three Signs Your Business Is Ready to Move to the Cloud

By September 18, 2017 Cloud

Companies often take IT for granted, or at least until something goes wrong or poor performance starts making a noticeable impact on productivity. With technology moving forward at a rate difficult to keep up with, organizations face greater pressure to implement a computing infrastructure specifically tailored to meet their goals. That’s where the cloud comes in.

#1. Your Business Is Expanding

There’s a good chance that, like most modern businesses, you’re heavily reliant on technology for marketing, sales, customer support and many other core business routines. But what happens when your business outgrows your technology resources to such an extent that your systems can’t keep up with the demand? The inevitable result is stunted growth placing a firm limit on what your company can do.

The cloud offers an unprecedented level of flexibility, since it allows you to pay for any amount of resources you need on a per-user and on-demand basis. Whether you need to scale back or expand your infrastructure, the cloud can accommodate you with its practically unlimited scalability. Best of all, you don’t need to make an upfront investment in expensive hardware you may be unready for.

Many businesses are also moving more toward workforce mobility and outsourcing. More and more people are working from home or on the move, with the days of being stuck in an office cubicle now rapidly fading away into yore. Since all cloud services are web-based, your employees and partners can access your resources from anywhere, regardless of what sort of device they’re using.

#2. Your Overheads Are Too High

Business technology costs a lot. Better technology costs even more, but speed and reliability are essential when it comes to your bottom line. A single server system from a small business can easily cost over $3,000, and that doesn’t even include the initial setup cost, which can easily double the price. You’ve then got ongoing maintenance and upgrade costs and utility bills to worry about.

Maintaining an entirely on-premises IT infrastructure offers more control, but it’s impossibly expensive for smaller businesses, especially if they want to use the latest technology. The cloud does away with most of these expenses by taking care of your computing workloads off-site in cutting-edge data centers. In other words, cloud users effectively rent their hardware resources on demand.

Of course, you’ll still need computers to use the cloud. But instead of relying on powerful on-premises hardware, you’ll need only a browser, and any internet-enabled device can run a browser. Aside from booting up into the operating system and accessing the internet, the computer in front of you hardly needs to do much work. All you need are barebones-thin clients or mobile devices.

#3. Your Team Can’t Keep Up

Large enterprises can afford to keep dedicated on-premises IT departments to help ensure that their technology resources are kept working flawlessly around the clock. Smaller businesses simply don’t have those sort of financial resources, so they need to call in an expensive local contractor to fix issues and install new systems. There’s a good chance that their internal teams won’t have the necessary expertise.

If your IT staff can’t keep up with the growing needs of your business, then you could quickly run into problems. Expertise is crucial for the sake of cybersecurity too. After all, how can you expect to conduct a thorough network security audit, as per government regulations, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing? Migrating to the cloud allows you to outsource your IT maintenance to a team of experts who will be on call around the clock any day of the year.

If any of the above situations sound familiar to you, then it’s probably time to move to the cloud. If you’re looking for a way to align technology with your business goals, drop us a line today.

Truewater

Truewater

Truewater was established in 2001 with the vision of bringing enterprise class IT support to small and medium sized businesses.