These days it's hard to not hear about the buzz surrounding cloud computing, it seems to be everywhere, Google Drive, iCloud and Dropbox being just a few of some of the cloud services that most people will have heard of.
What actually is cloud computing though? Where is it? Are we in it now? The answer is surprisingly simple, cloud computing is the process of storing and accessing data and programs over a third parties servers via the internet instead of from your own computers hard drive. "The Cloud" is just a buzzword for the internet dating back to old network diagrams that always referred to the internet as a big fluffy cloud
|
|
|
The internet being portrayed as a cloud, taken from Wikipedia's own network diagram page. |
What cloud computing IS NOT ABOUT is accessing programs and data from your hard drive, this is called local computing and it's how home and offices have functioned for the last 2 decades, and some would argue that local computing is still the superior practice. However as the years roll on and technology improves, it's starting to become clear that cloud computing is the future.
So why should you consider utilising the cloud in your business? The reasons are numerous, but at a glance some key points to consider are:
- Flexibility
- For a business looking to grow, or for one with ever-changing bandwidth demands, cloud computing is ideal, if the businesses needs increase, scaling up cloud capacity is simple by simply drawing on the power of the cloud service providers remote servers. The same goes for scaling down for fluctuating demands.
- Work From Anywhere
- I mentioned services such as iCloud and Google Drive earlier, most serious cloud services such as these offer a mobile app, meaning you're not restricted by what device you have to hand. Working from home isn't a problem either as any data (as long as it's stored on the cloud) can be retrieved from your home computer.
- Security
- Lost laptops and USB's can be a massive problem for any business, especially when those devices had sensitive data stored on them. Cloud computing can be a remedy to this as all data can be stored (and retrieved) via the cloud, data can also be remotely wiped off lost laptops in the event of it falling into the wrong hands.
- Lower Costs
- Cloud computing cuts out the high cost of buying and maintaining hardware. No more large servers / server rooms you can simply pay as you go on a subscription based model.
There are tons more benefits to making the switch over to the cloud, and with services like hosted telecoms and office, the possibilities for cloud computing stretch ever on. If you'd like to know more about cloud services give us a call and we'd be happy to chat with you about it on 01925 83 83 86, check out our website or drop us an email at advice@yellowbus.uk
