For businesses deciding to make the move to the cloud, but who don’t want their entire IT infrastructure moved off-site, picking and choosing select components to operate in the cloud is an easy way to utilize the power and efficiency of cloud computing without having to overhaul their in-house IT environment completely. Below, we have highlighted some different aspects of your IT environment that you can move to the cloud, based on specific needs.
Applications
One of the easiest ways to get part of your business into the cloud is to move over to cloud-based business applications. There are many software as a service (SaaS) providers who offer a multitude of business applications via a cloud subscription.
- Office Suite Applications
Office Suite basics include word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation programs. Most of these are available cloud service providers. Microsoft for example offers Microsoft 365, a cloud-based subscription version of its award winning Microsoft Office suite. Google Apps for Works is another option which includes Google Docs for word processing, Google Sheets for spreadsheets, and Google Slides for presentations.
With your office suite in the cloud, employees can access their files and work on multiple projects from virtually anywhere. This not only allows for more mobility of employees but enhances collaboration as team members can work on the same projects in the cloud, but from different physical locations.
Hosting an e-mail server in-house uses a lot of resources. Email is a constant and users’ inboxes fill very quickly. A cloud email provider provides scalability so businesses can increase their email storage needs with a few clicks of a mouse. Cloud providers also provide business continuity with server replication across different availability zones, so if the emails server were to go down, an exact copy could be activated – to ensure that your employees have access to their email at all times.
Storage
Companies have a lot of data such as word documents, spreadsheets, videos, images, design files, and more. The longer a company is in business (or the bigger a business gets), the more data they will create and need to store. Using a cloud service provider for archive storage is a great way to save on IT costs. Files that aren’t accessed regularly but need to be saved for future reference can be moved to cloud storage. If a company needs more storage, all they have to do scale up in their cloud dashboard. Instead of having to pay for a physical server and then buying more servers as space is needed, businesses can keep their archive data in the cloud, for a low-monthly fee based on the amount of storage they need.
Databases
Like with the storage of documents and other file types, databases can grow very quickly in a relatively short amount of time. As more data is captured and entered, the bigger the database becomes. Moving a database (or databases) to the cloud provides unparalleled scalability to accommodate for rapidly changing database sizes. Plus cloud back-ups ensure that the data stored in your databases is safe and backed up so it’s available whenever you need it.
