10 Advantages of Cloud Computing That You May Not Know

Cloud Computing has taken all types of businesses by storm though their motivations vary, industries, geographies, and platforms are turning to cloud services for its various benefits.  According to a recent survey done by Goldman Sachs, it is said that cloud computing infrastructure and platforms will grow at 30% from 2013 – 2018 compared with only 5% growth for overall enterprise IT. The numbers are astonishing whether you are looking at Saas, PaaS or IaaS platforms, the predictions by top research enterprises are the same.  In fact, the IT budget is now more spent towards cloud computing than anything else. Why Cloud? Why major enterprises and SMBs around the world are going for Cloud Computing?

Find below the ten advantages of Cloud Computing that you may not know:

1. Completely Utilized Hardware:

The practical applications of cloud computing will help in high utilization and smoothing of those inevitable peaks and troughs in workloads throughout the year. Enterprise workloads will now share the server infrastructure with various other organizations and their computing needs. This in turn, allows the cloud-computing vendors to optimize the hardware needs of its data centers, which will help to save more costs for you.

2. Fresh Software Available for All:

With Cloud computing platforms such as Software as a Service (SaaS), you will be able to get your hands on the latest versions of the applications that are needed to run the business as soon as they are released. Whatever upgrades, new features and functionality will be made immediately available which in turn will lead to more productivity. Moreover, in today’s time updates are released more frequently than ever which is in contrast to home built or purchased software that might have major releases once in a year which will take more time to roll out. 

3. Get More with Less:

With cloud computing, enterprises around the world can reduce the cost of managing their own data centers or completely eliminate their carbon footprint altogether. With cloud computing, you can reduce the number of staff who used to earlier manage data centers and reduce the number of servers and software cost which will significantly contribute to the bottom line. 

4. 24/7 Availability:

Cloud computing vendors are very reliable and maintain nearly 100% uptime with their services. Employees can stay connected as long there is an internet connection and one can access cloud applications from anywhere in the world and some of the applications even work off-line as well.

5. It Comes with Flexible Costs:

You have to pay for what you use and when you don’t use their services then you do not have to pay a dime. It is because of this flexible costing that many enterprises around the world opt for cloud computing services. Traditional services have a very mundane way of costing where they charge the same during both peak and non-peak service hours and you can’t change the capacity of the server infrastructure. Whereas cloud computing allows you to pay for the server infrastructure capacity only when it is needed. The capacity of services can be provisioned depending upon peak times and less when services are not needed.

6. Better Collaboration:

Earlier when the groups were scattered across the globe while managing a project, collaboration was a tedious process. Now with Cloud applications, the collaboration part has drastically increased many folds and groups or workforce can meet virtually and share information real time and help in reducing time-to-market and improve on better customer service and product development.

7. Streamlined Operations:

Companies no more need to buy equipment and maintain them and look after them in the form of a data center. They don’t have to spend money on personnel, hardware, utilities and other aspects of day-day operations. With cloud computing a company can save significant costs. Traditional computing costs millions of dollars before to showcase any value from the investment made towards the datacenter. 

8. Highly Mobile:

Cloud applications are available 24/7 and 365 days a year. No matter where the employees are they can work using their smartphones or any other hand-held devices in the form of tablets and laptops.

9. Facilitates Merger and Acquisition Activity:

With cloud computing, everything has become a seamless transition. Even when two companies are merging, cloud computing facilitates faster changes so the two individual companies can become one and start their operations as quickly as possible in an efficient manner.

10. Lesser Carbon Footprint:

Cloud computing makes the world a better place. With fewer data centers across the globe, the environmental effect is less compared with traditional computing where every other organization would now have their own data centers with high carbon footprint across the globe. Today, enterprises around the world who use shared services automatically improve their ‘green’ credentials.

Conclusion:

It is no wonder why enterprises across the globe are in favor of cloud computing rather than traditional services. Cloud Computing has made IT services more reliable, real-time and efficient. It has also helped enterprises to stay competitive and streamline the services that they provide in a quick manner and have helped in drastically reducing the ready-to-market time of services.