How Your Business Can Save Money With The Cloud! | Storm Internet

You’ve probably heard that your business can save money by moving to the cloud. In this article, we’ll explain exactly what that means, and how you can start to see savings in your bottom line from cloud based services.

The term “cloud” gets thrown around a lot in everything from tech posts online, to twitter to the television show “The League.”

Even though the term is used widely and you may even have a broad idea about what the cloud is or how it works, you still may be unclear about how it can help your business to save money!

The cloud is a group of network servers each with a different function, some servers run applications others use the cloud to deliver products such as Adobe, which moved to the cloud full time in 2015. Other uses for cloud servers include storing and accessing data with applications like Drop box or Instagram that allow you to upload or share data anywhere.

If you use any sort of social media sites, then you are already using the cloud when you upload pictures or memes.

The cloud allows you to upload or access your data, services or applications without having to actually have physical access to the servers where this information and files are stored.

We’ll talk about how the cloud saves you money in just a second but it’s important to note that the cloud also saves you time, worry and hassle. Let’s say that a disk blows up at 3 A.M, if you manage your own server, you have to deal with it. If you’ve outsourced to a cloud provider, the problem will immediately be fixed by the cloud providers (like Storm) who monitor the cloud servers 24/7.

So now that we’re a little bit more clear on exactly what the cloud is and how it works, let’s talk about what you’re really here for, how the cloud can save you money!

While there are an almost unlimited number of ways you can use the cloud to save money, for the sake of keeping this blog post under 10 pages, I’m just going to share the 5 easiest and most effective ways:

The 5 easiest and most effective ways the cloud saves your business money

• Save on hardware
• Pay only for what you use
• Lower upfront costs
• Reduced labour costs
• Agility

Let’s break down further

• Save money on hardware. The easiest and most significant way that using the cloud will save your business money is through hardware. If you’re going to run your own servers for all the different needs of your business or lease a server from someone, you’re going to be paying a lot of money! Especially if you want, top of the line equipment! Furthermore, businesses often purchase more hardware than they need, which ends up being a sunk cost that can never be recovered. Setting up your own servers can cost tens of thousands of pounds and will require upkeep and maintenance every month. You can reap the biggest savings of all by not buying expensive server equipment and instead making your business completely cloud based. This is easiest to accomplish if you are just starting out as hardware can be difficult to re-sell.
• Pay only for what you use. Another great way that moving your business to the cloud helps to save you money is through phasing out anything that you don’t use. Instead of you having to buy all of that expensive equipment the provider deals with those costs lowering you’re out of pocket expenses for installation, maintenance, hardware and more! Additionally many companies allow you to use what’s known as the “pay-as-you-go” model which charges you only for what you use just like your home or office electricity bill. Not only does this lower your monthly bills, it also allows you to experiment with different solutions without having to buy new equipment to try it! This saves you money each and every month!
• Lower upfront costs. A lot of times when launching a new venture online, you have a lot of upfront fees. Hardware, software, installation fees, support and maintenance can take a real bite out of your bottom line. With the cloud you don’t have the costly infrastructure of building and maintaining servers and networks for your own business. The investment to get started with all of the advantages of your own server is just the cost of the cloud provider fees, rather than having to purchase servers, power and software. Best of all you know beforehand that you won’t be investing in any resources you’re not going to use unnecessarily. Because of the way cloud services work, you will be able to acquire resources quickly and easily while retaining the ability to scale your business appropriately all within the cloud system.
• Reduced labour costs. When you outsource your network server needs to a cloud provider, you also outsource the responsibility for keeping the equipment and support of the infrastructure to the provider as well. You don’t have to worry about managing, repairing, or replacing any of the equipment of infrastructure at any time. Another benefit of cloud services is that many tasks and services can be automated with the cloud, further reducing the need for employees or labour. This will allow your IT staff to focus on bigger problems like business development or strategy, which will bring more revenues in to your business. The reduction in labour costs is especially helpful for small start up companies who can reduce the number of hires they need to make, keeping costs down.
• Agility. One of the major benefits of the cloud system is in fact its lack of equipment and the ability to connect from any device even your cellphone! Cloud services allow you access your information, files, and data from anywhere using easy to understand applications that are run entirely on the cloud! This added agility would allow you and your staff to take care of business outside of the office, while making sure that you never miss an important client ever again!

I know there was a lot of information in this article and to be honest we’re only scratching the surface of the myriad of ways that cloud services can help your business save money and perform better.

If you’re curious as to exactly how other ways moving your business to cloud service technologies can help save you money, get in touch with us by clicking here or call us on 0800 817 4727.