The IBM Center for Applies Insights published a fascinating study called “Under cloud cover: How leaders are accelerating competitive differentiation.” It made use of a survey of over 800 companies who adopted the cloud to better understand how cloud services were being used in the business world. The results revealed quite a bit about the benefits and versatility of cloud services for many types of businesses. Based on that study, here are seven huge reasons businesses are using the cloud more and more, for increased benefit.
1. You can back up your files with the cloud.
There’s little worse for your productivity or mental peace than a crashed hard drive when you have no backup. The cloud virtually removes that kind of problem, almost completely eliminating the chance that a business or individual’s hard work will go up in smoke.
2. You can work on any number of devices.
If all you need is a password and a connection to the internet: working on files becomes incredibly easy. That encourages employees to do more work away from the office, at home, on a business trip, etc. The easier it is for people to work, the more work that will get done.
3. The cloud makes it easier to understand and utilize data.
According to the IBM report, 54% of leading organizations are using cloud services to understand the massive volume of both structured and unstructured data, too large to process using traditional database and software techniques, otherwise known as “big data.” The cloud offers analytics and other tools to make sense of all that information, which helps businesses perform better and faster. Common improvements include increasing workplace efficiency and optimizing things for the customer.
4. You can collaborate with the cloud.
The cloud makes it extremely easy to work with others on documents, spreadsheets and other types of files. Google Drive is the most obvious example of that, with its suite of simple yet powerful apps, but many cloud services make collaboration easy in other ways, namely providing a shared folder that can be used by anyone on staff but still maintains a hierarchal structure so that certain users can have more control over it.
5. The cloud saves time.
Everyone in and out of the office being able to upload files to a shared folder saves you and your co-workers precious time that you would otherwise be wasting. The fast upload and download speeds of the cloud along with the convenient access makes sharing files easy and efficient.
6. The cloud make businesses more accessible.
Downloading files from external hard drives is slow, tedious and inconvenient. Having your files stored in something like Dropbox or Google Drive makes it incredibly easy to share those files with anyone who’s interested, whether that interested party be a co-worker or customer or client, with just a few clicks.
7. You can save money on storage.
One external hard drive that holds two terabytes of data costs around $125. That amount of money more than pays for a year of 1 TB in the cloud through many services. If that doesn’t immediately sound like a good option then you should understand that having the files in the cloud, protected, makes a low monthly payment a huge bargain. If your house or office burns down you’ll lose everything. Having your data in the cloud makes it a lot harder to use. That safety and sense of safety is worth a lot more than the cost of a lifetime of storage in the clouds, adding yet another reason that the cloud is becoming or already is indispensable for a lot of companies of any shape and size. There are virtually no drawbacks to making the transition to cloud.
Featured photo credit: New Toy/archie4oz via flickr.com
