7 Benefits of Moving to the Cloud

BY

2023-07-27T23:20:33.000+10:0

Cloud Migration

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Moving to the cloud can result in near endless technology improvements to your business, but looking beyond this there is a huge range of economical advantages too. A recent survey has seen 82% of the companies who made the move to cloud computing save money among other benefits. In this article we will look at some of these key drivers. Though ultimately, all benefits should lead to:

"Increased revenue, decreased costs and increased customer satisfaction - the goals of all businesses" - Every business owner ever

In the past, using a locally installed application to provide your software to a customer required an installation process on the hard drive of that machine. By comparison the cloud predominately uses a browser. This completely transforms the capabilities of your software. These benefits then transform into advantages for your business. Here is a list of 7 key business benefits to cloud computing.

1. Be Competitive

To disrupt or be disrupted, that is the question. A Deliotte survey saw "on-premise drop from 59% in 2019 to 38% in 2021, a reduction of 41% Basically what these figures mean is if you're not on board, you're already behind. With majority of businesses already recognising the advantages in cloud computing, customers now have an expectation to be offered software through the cloud. Making the move is therefore likely leading you to increased customer satisfaction and then increased profits. Joining the cloud will therefore help you keep your business competitive in an advancing technological market.

2. Cost of Infrastructure

Using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) allows you to grow with your business. IaaS involves using someone else's data centre, usually AWS or Azure, to set up a virtual server and storage base for your company. Amazon Web Services (AWS) sits at the top of the mountain of servers available, on track to generate at least $US7 billion in revenue in 2015. The growth of a system such as this has developed so exponentially due to its popularity amongst businesses. Companies are able to significantly reduce their expenditure by not having to set up their own hardware in data centres, which can be extremely costly to maintain.

I do want to give you a fair warning about when the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) might make it cheaper to own your own hardware in a data centre. TCO is the purchase price of an asset plus the costs of operation. Eventually you may be spending more on outsourcing your cloud storage than what it would cost to install and manage your own data centre. Your company has to be pretty massive before the TCO reaches this point.

3. Scalability

Looking to scale the wall of success with your application? A huge advantage of the cloud is its on-demand business model. Using IaaS means as your company gains traction and more customers, you can scale your infrastructure to match. So whether you have 10 customers and need to grow to 100 or even 1000, you only have to pay for what you need. To see the potential financial benefits yourself, you can test the maths on either the AWS or Azure calculator.

4. Continuous Delivery

Often you'll find when developing your software - particularly if you are building in iterations - that you are constantly making improvements and making changes to its functionality. The Holy Grail of continuous delivery is to shorten the length of time between the moment one of these new functionalities have been developed and the point in time when it becomes available to the end user.

It is far easier to deliver thenew functionalities to the user, when software is hosted in the cloud. The main reason for this is that using the cloud means personal desktopmachines do not have to have additional software installed on them locally. The cloud provides for a far more efficient method in delivery of your patches and updates. The end result of this is potentially a boost in customer satisfaction due to the improved efficiency in the delivery of your product. This puts you one step closer to achieving your business goal of greater profits.

5. Access to wider markets

The world is your oyster when you move to the cloud. With the global cloud market expected to grow to $121 billion dollars by the end of 2015 there is now potential for your software to be accessed worldwide. Instead of a product's reach being limited to your marketing budget - usually within the same country as the business - placing it on the cloud gives it global reach. With the cloud, anyone in the world is able to access your product through a browser and that convenience will only help increase customer satisfaction and profits.

6. Up-selling and Cross-selling

Upping your game with the cloud is easy. Up-selling is when the seller encourages the customer to upgrade their account, for example to purchase more storage or licences. Cross-selling is when a user purchases a new plug-in or module that offers them new functionality. The flexibility of the cloud provides your business with the ability up-sell and cross-sell.

Software often develops a stickiness' as users become more dependant on it, creating the perfect marketing opportunity to sell them higher levels of subscriptions. With Amazon reporting in 2006 that 35% of it's revenues were as a direct result of it's cross sales and up-selling efforts, it's not hard to see how this marketing strategy can generate awesome profits for your business.

7. Mobile-Apps

A huge benefit of moving to the cloud is that it enables the easier use of mobile apps. At the end of 2014 over 52% of the time spent on digital media occurred on mobile applications; and this figure is still growing! This means there is a decrease in the market for desktop-only applications. Customers now want access anytime and in any place to your software.

In the meantime, it's time to start disrupting your competition. Get on board with cloud computing to save your business costs, increase your revenue and send customer satisfaction through the roof.

Learn how you can get on the cloud and start meeting business goals by visiting our Legacy Migration Resource Hub today.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Eban Escott

Big picture thinker and Star Wars fanatic

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