Our unusual times have pushed businesses into adoption of cloud computing, the main reason being the increased demand for remote work along with the ability to maintain business operations. Gartner’s prediction for increase in cloud revenue in 2020 was 17%, from $227.8 billion to $266.4 billion, even before COVID 19. It’s possible that that revenue may increase even more. The “why” of moving to the cloud is easier to define for some than the “how.” Read on to learn more about the benefits of moving your line-of-business applications to the cloud.
Benefits of Cloud Computing for Business Applications
The question on the minds of many business owners is how to migrate critical business applications to the cloud. Some applications are cloud-ready (for fast migration) or cloud-optimized, running on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or Platform as a Service (PaaS) delivery models. As with all options, these have their benefits and considerations. Another option is cloud-native or SaaS applications, wherein computing resources are available via the Internet. The cloud service provider provides the infrastructure, too, so there is no need for costly capital expenses. Instead, SaaS provides an economical, subscription-based delivery model for cloud services, services which provide a wide range of mission-critical applications–CRM, accounting, HR, email and more. These can be accessed both in office and–very important, now–away from the office for remote workers. Another benefit of SaaS is that customer-facing applications (online chat, for example) can be rapidly deployed.
Considerations for Cloud Migration
As ever, a business needs to consider its business needs before cloud migration. What are the mission-critical applications that need to be available at all times? Where does the cloud data center reside, and what provisions are there for redundancy or fail-over? Another consideration is the health of a company’s network, whether it has any weak points that need patching, or any antivirus or anti-malware definitions needing to be updated. Yet another is bandwidth; is there enough to support the heavy Internet use?
If you know you want or need to move your primary line-of-business applications to a cloud environment, and need guidance, contact us today for an assessment of your cloud readiness.
