4 Ways Cloud Computing Can Help Your Business

The cloud has brought with it a plethora of benefits for small businesses, so many that organizations often are under the impression that the cloud can solve even the biggest issues. While we can’t speak for each and every business out there, we can say with confidence that regardless of your organization’s size, it can benefit in some way, shape, or form from a little bit of cloud implementation.

We’ll discuss some of the most common ways that businesses take advantage of cloud computing.

File Sharing
File sharing is one of the biggest reasons why a small business might choose to make the jump to the cloud. It enables cooperation through a centralized environment dedicated to file sharing, and it allows businesses to access important information without being on-site or in the office. This extra flexibility can be a major benefit for businesses that have a limited time to get work done, and since it connects users to the tools and information they need to keep busy no matter their location, productivity can skyrocket.

Communications
Other businesses are also taking full advantage of the cloud to create powerful cloud-hosted communication infrastructures. A business can save a lot of money by investing in a cloud-based Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) system, or a cloud-based email solution. By working with the cloud to create your ideal communications infrastructure, your organization can put together a feature-rich solution that is both more flexible and functional overall. For example, a VoIP solution can have a lot more features than your standard landline. A business can implement a customized VoIP solution with all the necessary features of a traditional phone system, plus some. You can fully leverage messaging, conferencing, and other types of enterprise-level phone services at a much more affordable and less wasteful cost.

Hosted email allows for a lot of benefits that you simply wouldn’t be able to achieve if you hosted your own email server in-house. You can completely cut out the unnecessary costs of hosting and maintaining your own email server, while also improving security and functionality through message encryption and instant messaging integration.

Storage
Cloud providers all over the world offer services to their users that include countless gigabytes of cloud storage. Since this is so affordable, not just individuals, but businesses as well, try to take full advantage of cloud storage services. The issue that many businesses face in this regard is the idea of their data being hosted in a public cloud storage system that doesn’t give them as much control over their data as they would like. This is why so many organizations prefer to host their own private clouds on-site, or in a collocated data center where control isn’t an issue.

Cloud storage is great for businesses because the data can be accessed anywhere at any time, giving the business a considerable amount of mobility and flexibility that adds up in the long run. The apparent lack of security is generally in regard to how employees access cloud-based data, not the cloud environment itself, as it’s likely that the cloud is encrypted and secured. Some organizations already turn to the cloud for their data backup and disaster recovery strategies.

Security
Security is critical for any IT administrator, which makes it a natural choice for a cloud solution. Since there are so many threats out there that need to be addressed, it only makes sense that cybersecurity firms start to offer these services through a cloud-based environment. Thanks to Security as a Service solutions, you can remote into machines to set up any security services that meet your organization’s needs. In particular, this is good for organizations that rely on the Internet to go about their daily duties, as well as constantly updating and maintaining the hardware and software solutions with the most recent threat definitions. You can leverage solutions like content filtering, spam blocking, and much more through a good cloud security investment.

How can your business leverage the cloud? Find out by calling Ashton Technology Solutions at 216-397-4080.