Would you like your clients informed, team members on task, and enhanced opportunities to manage, share and control your own data? But would you like to do it without building your own infrastructure or investing in more hardware, databases, and software applications?

Cloud computing is the most effective and cost-efficient IT solution for small businesses. With the cloud you can streamline processes, globalize your workforce, and reduce spending on technology, infrastructure and overall capital.

These benefits allow small businesses to “stay focused, be more collaborative, and bring products to market more quickly, because they’ve got access to the kind of infrastructure that only large companies used to have,” says Judith Hurwitz, president and CEO of Hurwitz & Associates and a coauthor of Cloud Computing for Dummies.

So if you’re looking for a way to make your small business more nimble, productive, and efficient without investing a fantastic amount of capital, the cloud might just be what you’re looking for.

Save Money

Cloud computing provides ubiquitous, scalable, and on-demand access that gives you and your workforce better control and management over your data. But the cloud offers more than just storage capacity and computing power. Servers, databases, and software applications provide a pool of configurable computing resources that can easily be scaled in response to any changes within the company.

Most cloud providers offer variable instead of fix costs, requiring minimal upfront spending and a pay as you go model. This scalable flexibility gives your company an unmatched agility to meet market demands without having to invest in on-site infrastructure that might remain mostly idle or underutilized.

In fact, 82 percent of companies save money by cutting the costs of IT support and on-premise infrastructure. At the same time, cloud adopters have more opportunities to enhance collaboration, improve daily operations, and keep team members on task than with traditional network servers.

Enhance Collaboration

The cloud delivers an unprecedented level of collaborative functionality to both small and large businesses. The cloud stores and maintains data in one location so team members and managers can access the information required to stay productive and efficient.

This means employees don’t have to ping-pong documents or reports back and forth via email or meet face-to-face. Instead, employees can sync up and work together on tasks, reports, and critical issues in real-time, regardless of where they are in the world or the computing device they’re using.

Frost & Sullivan found that companies which invested in collaboration technology such as the cloud had a 400% return on investment. Another report indicates that this enhanced collaboration can cut computing time and costs, annually saving U.S companies over $12 billion.

In an era when speed and agility are critical factors to success, companies must make the most use of their time, resources, and productivity, ensuring every department, each employee, and the company as a whole is at its absolute efficiency.

Protect Against Disasters

Natural disasters such as fires, hurricanes, or earthquakes put 80 percent of companies out of business. 40 percent of companies that undergo a critical IT failure caused by cyber attacks or malware go bankrupt within a year.

Disasters can happen anytime, anywhere, and to anyone. Without adequate data protection, a single disaster, whether natural or man-made, can completely destroy your business. The ones that do manage to survive still lose a substantial amount of money caused by downtime and/or repairs.

The cloud, however, gives small business owners a profound relief and protection against any disasters or disruptive events. With the cloud, your data is safely stored and accessible from any mobile or computing device, allowing you to quickly get your business back online and survive a disaster without losing an immense amount of money.

In fact, businesses that store their data on the cloud resolve any disruptive issues 4 times quicker than businesses without the cloud.

Improve Sustainability

According to research conducted by Google, businesses that switch to the cloud can reduce their energy costs by 60-85 percent. Furthermore, the cloud’s multi-tenant architecture helps reduce your dependency on resource-heavy physical products and the need to maintain and upgrade hardware. But the cloud does more than just reduce computing and hardware expenses; it has a positive impact on the environment.

Information technology (IT) accounts for 2 percent of human greenhouse gas emissions worldwide. However small this number seems, minimizing hardware needs and their respective energy requirements would potentially prevent 85.7 million metric tons of annual carbon emissions by 2020, according to a report released by the Carbon Disclosure Project.

Adopting the cloud means your business could reduce its carbon emissions by 95 percent compared with companies that use on-site servers. Plus, you’ll reduce the amount of energy and resources you need, saving your business money.

Conclusion

Within the next 6 years, the number of small business owners who use the cloud will double. 80 percent of companies who already use the cloud see improvements in nearly every aspect of their business in only half a year.

While the cloud may be one of the best and most cost-effective IT solutions for small businesses, choosing the right provider that matches your needs isn’t always easy. But support is there. To learn more about the cloud and how it can help your business, contact us today.