Meeting the demands of the modern-day small to midsized businesses (SMBs) is a huge challenge facing many business leaders and IT operators today. Thankfully, the advent of cloud offerings has brought a new scalable model into the landscape.
Traditional, office-based infrastructure was fine until greater capacity was needed than those servers could deliver, vendor support became an issue, or the needs of a hybrid workforce weren’t being met. In the highly competitive SMB space, maintaining and investing in a robust and efficient IT infrastructure can be one of the ways to stay ahead of competitors.
Cost-saving Built into the Model
Brian Sibley
Whether 20 or 20,000 users, the cloud will fit all with a much simpler, per-user cost model.
This ability to integrate modern computing environments in day-to-day operations means businesses can now stop rushing to catch up. It also comes with the invaluable peace of mind that these operations will scale up or down as needed.
In addition, the potential cost savings and added value will better serve each business and help future-proof the organization, even on a tight budget. Cloud service solutions are almost infinitely flexible compared to traditional on-premises options. They also won’t require in-house maintenance.
Sustainably Embracing Cloud Offerings
Large data centers often are considered a threat, contributing to climate change with their environmental impact and carbon footprint. However, cloud is a great option.
The scalability of cloud infrastructure and its economies of scale result in cost as well as carbon savings. Rather than a traditional model — where a server runs in-house at 20% capacity, using power 24/7/365 and pumping out heat — cloud data centers are specifically designed to run and cater to multiple users more efficiently. They can use white space cooling, for example, to optimize energy consumption.
Big players like Microsoft and Amazon are investing heavily in sustainable, on-site energy generation to power their data centers. They’re even planning to feed excess power back into the National Grid.
Simply put, it’s more energy efficient for individual businesses to use a cloud offering than to run their own servers. The carbon footprint for each business using a cloud solution becomes much smaller.
Simplifying Security While Scaling
Many security solutions now are cloud based, too. This means security is not compromised and can be managed remotely via SOC teams either in-house or via the security provider. The latter has greater resources and more expertise.
Ultimately, a cloud services solution with servers, storage, security, and more will best service SMBs. It’s scalable, offers cost savings, and relieves in-house IT teams from many mundane yet critical tasks. This allows them to focus on more profitable activities.
Brian Sibley is the solutions architect at Espria Ltd. He works with clients to understand their business challenges and design technical strategies and solutions to address them in the most effective manner.
Image: iStock
