Benefits of the Cloud for SMBs

If you are a small- or medium-sized business, Cloud services are one of the most useful and valuable investments that can be made. One business we spoke to, TechQuarters, described how the cloud supports their organisation and the service they provide – the outsourced IT support London based organisations get from TechQuarters incorporates a range of cloud apps and services.

Types of Cloud Service

Cloud services are usually divided into services. There are a range of public cloud providers – such as Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services – who offer different types of services which businesses or individuals can pay a subscription for. TechQuarters uses Microsoft Azure, and some of the elements of the IT support services London companies get from them include things like cloud migration, cloud hosting, etc.

1. IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service is one of the broadest forms of cloud service – it provides businesses with storage, computing, and networking tools. This is the least granular form of cloud service; it offers a canvas for businesses to build their own cloud-based infrastructure.
2. PaaS – Platform as a Service describe a set of services that allow businesses to build their own applications and services. It is more pre-build than IaaS, the services that come with it have specific purposes.
3. SaaS – Software as a Service describes any pre-built application that is hosted and distributed from the cloud. Some examples of SaaS are email clients, content relationship management software, and more.

Benefits of the Cloud for SMBs

The great thing about the Cloud for SMBs is that it enables smaller organisations to do more with their limited resources – for instance, it makes implementing things like remote work much more feasible. It also acts as an equaliser for businesses – meaning that smaller businesses to compete with their larger competitors more easily.

1. Reduced IT Costs – With the Cloud, businesses can get rid of a lot of their hardware and networking infrastructure, and instead fulfil these requirements within the Cloud. This approach is more future-proof, because you won’t need to make large investments on new hardware every few years. The monthly costs of Infrastructure as a Service also tends to be both manageable, and scalable.

2. Low Initial Investment – like we described in the previous point, Infrastructure as a Service is a very low initial investment. The subscription model means that there is no upfront cost. As well as this, it is very flexible.
3. Disaster Proofing – when you rely on hardware-based network infrastructure, you’re at much more risk of being affected by physical disasters – such as flooding, fires, burglary, etc. On the other hand, with Cloud-based infrastructures, businesses are insulated against those types of incidents, because that critical hardware is all based in the datacentres of the cloud provider.
4. Better Collaboration – Software as a Service makes sharing and accessing data much more fluid and flexible. With Cloud apps like Slack or Microsoft Teams, departments can easily communicate with one another. Basecamp, as a cloud-based project management solution, helps to consolidate relevant data and track progress on projects. These are just a few of the examples of how the Cloud can facilitate better collaboration.
5. Data Analytics & More – the Cloud helps businesses centralise all of their data. This has many benefits, one of which is being able to access all that data for analytical purposes. Keeping it centralised also ensures all data is up-to-date and organised, which makes analytics much easier.
6. Automate Updates – most as-a-Service solutions include automated updates. The Cloud provider is responsible for ensuring that their customers have access to the most up-to-date tools and services (as per their subscription).