The Cloud Impact on Businesses
What is the most phenomenal technical advancement that has changed the business economics recently? Any guesses? Yes, it is nothing but the Cloud Impact.
The concept emerged in the last decade and in a short time, it appears in the headlines of all leading business and IT magazines today.
Giants like Gartner predict a worldwide year-on-year growth of 18% and the total business is expected to reach 250 Billion USD.
If you ask technical brains (CFOs and CIOs) of big organizations, then more than two-third of them says that Cloud will have the biggest impact on businesses in the whole world.
What makes it such a whooping success?
The biggest reason for its success is the ability to offer new and complex business models. Moreover, Cloud computing has orchestrated global integration networks in a quite a significant manner than most of the technical minds predicted.
As a result, it has been adopted much significantly by SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) and mid-tier companies than expectations. In fact, the majority of the researchers are adjusting their forecasts upward.
The fundamental reason behind the popularity is its ability to uplift revenues. There are examples when
Efficiency improvement and cost reduction are phenomenal
If we compare to IT spending on Cloud computing, then it has grown as high as five percent in the past decade. Experts believe that it will increase further by 2020. Why are people spending so much money on it? They are spending because they see phenomenal benefits,
Reports say that by using Cloud environment, businesses improved time to market drastically. The improvement was more than 20 percent which is great by any performance standards. Also, it brings average 20 percent increase in the growth of the company and increases process efficiency also by 20%.
As far as cost reduction is concerned, then at least 15 to 20 percent drop in operational costs and overall IT expenditure has been reported due to the Cloud impact in organizations. Though not significant, at least 1 percent drop in IT maintenance cost was observed due to the cloud.
Three biggest impacts on your business
Technically speaking, Cloud computing is a type of Network Computing on a grand scale. It is a complex array of servers distributed across the Internet.
Since the interfaces run on browsers in local computers, it offers a seamless, real-time experience to the users. These local computers can be desktops, laptops, tablets or even mobile phones.
Typically, the software applications are installed and managed by third-party implementers. The applications are accessible from everywhere and anywhere, making the backend completely transparent to the users.
Due to its inherent capabilities, Cloud brings three incredible benefits to the business environment.
Cloud Impact 1 >> It makes communication faster
Cloud computing enhances business communication affordably. Since you seamlessly access every bit of information, adopting decentralized structure is quite easy.
Since there is a lot of Gung-Ho about decentralization, cloud service providers capitalize it by offering reliable and cost-effective solutions. You can communicate with team members spread across the globe in real-time.
As the cloud environment becomes further efficient and dependable, there is no risk of losing a single bit of data.
You can use the whole spectrum of platforms to connect to the cloud i.e. handheld devices, laptops, and desktops.
You can arrange high-resolution, multi-party video conference calls to connect to multiple team members across the globe. New cloud communication models incorporate a plethora of facilities and services to make it further useful.
With video and audio conferencing becoming the standard operating protocol in modern businesses, it is mandatory to make use of the cloud to achieve a higher degree of communication.
Cloud Impact 2 >> Easy data access is another virtue of Cloud model
Cloud offers better and enhanced business environment to clients, and easy access to data is one major business benefit.
Since you can access data, information, and software from any nuke and corner of the world, there is no need of carrying business specific applications on the laptop. Don’t carry the full suite of tailor-made software that is being used in your company.
You simply need an interface that can run the browser. The whole application setup becomes independent of the end-user machine.
It gives immense flexibility and easiness to professionals who need to travel across the business setup located in different geographies.
Moreover, it brings uniformity of operations in the whole organization.
Since all applications and software are on the cloud, there is no risk of losing the application software. Your password-protected data is accessible all across.
Cloud Impact 3 >> Collaborate securely
When you implement business software in the organization, upgrades are inevitable. Over the period, you need to install new features, add security patches, and fix the bugs as well.
Cloud makes these things easy in two ways.
Firstly, the responsibility of handling all these activities lies on the service provider. Since they are expert in the niche, you needn’t to worry about the technical support.
Secondly, it becomes possible to extend the training and technical knowledge to the whole team in one shot.
Each member of the crew becomes familiar with the changes in the networking parameters, updates in the operating system or installation of security patches.
Since collaboration is an integral part of your business, implementing cloud becomes all the more useful. Access files, data and other important information anywhere and anytime.
Changes made in the system become visible instantly all across. Physical and geographical limitations no longer exist. Cloud makes the business independent of the physical IT resources.
Cloud computing is virtually “server-less” computing, and its popularity makes operations easy. More and more businesses are adapting to this new-age method for enhancing business effectiveness. Since there is a lesser dependency on on-site infrastructure, it is indeed a profitable option.
With increasing cloud impact, we can assume that the coming era will be the ‘cloud era’. Those who are not on the cloud will move to it, and those who are already there will accept the significant changes happening in the cloud environment.