Top 13 Biggest Business Benefits of Moving to the Cloud Cloud computing is one of the flamboyant innovations of this digital era. Because of its impeccable features and having the capability to solve a range of problems, it has become the fastest adopted technology in the domain. It eliminates the need for hardware resources and helps businesses to simply focus on business goals and aspects. Cloud technology enables organizations to seamlessly run their business applications and software programs without installing them on PCs.   Table of Content 1.Space, efficiency, and added security 2.Eliminates space concerns, access business data anywhere 3.Easier, Safer, and Faster processing 4.Computational power, Advanced security, and cost effective 5.Offers great flexibility 6.Scalability and Portability 7.Shift in time allocation, Employee satisfaction, and user adoption 8.Minimized upgrades, migrations and downtime 9.Limitless resource expansion, Flexible pricing 10.Cost-efficiency and Cloud communication 11.Reduced Maintenance burden 12.Lowers Carbon Emission 13.The Cloud Makes Our Business Better 14.Multiple Benefits 14.1.Quicker and agile to respond business problems 14.2.Provides advanced security 14.3.Lowers maintenance cost 14.4.Reduces physical equipment needs 15. Conclusion Businesses can simply store multimedia content in the cloud and access them anywhere, anytime through the internet. Without the need for servers, employees can streamline their daily operations and effectively test their software programs. Cloud computing has its own importance in every field of business. In this blog, we will discuss the business benefits of moving to the cloud. Space, efficiency, and added security “What makes moving the cloud so great is the space, efficiency, and added security it provides. Since the cloud is scalable, it can keep up and still cater to the needs of your ever-growing business. It also makes it easier for teams to designate tasks and collaborate with one another which in turn boosts work efficiency. The cloud also provides security to businesses that use it as it is easier for companies to track who opens and uses certain documents making it easier for owners to keep their employees and business in check.” - Simon Elkjær, Chief Marketing Officer, avXperten Eliminates space concerns, access business data anywhere “An Invisible Book You’ll Never Lose: Does anyone remember how we used to put our important documents on floppy discs? Oh, how happy I am to be in 2021. Confession time. One time, I lost a floppy disc that had my bank account information. I'm glad I was a broke college kid at the time. Anyways, as a business owner today who uses the cloud, if you're not on it, get on it. I promise it will change your life for the better. Since my business has been using the cloud, I never have to worry about losing any important data or information anymore. I don't even have to use one specific device either because I can access my business just about anywhere. Not to mention, I've saved so much space in the office! Fewer file cabinets mean more room to stretch my legs. My favorite thing above all about the cloud is now I don't have to worry about paying for flood or fire insurance. Just kidding. You should still get that.” - Tim Denman, Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at ServGrow “Businesses have distinct benefits to moving to the cloud. Once businesses move to the cloud, they have direct benefits to their business operations, customer operations, and the ability to manage their financial spend. Business operations can be made more efficient with better software, reliable IT infrastructure, and the ability to work from anywhere at any time. Business operations can work efficiently through SaaS solutions and collaboration tools. Customer operations are improved due to your staff availability, reliability, and the opportunity to serve themselves if needed. A business can improve their financial spend by managing the exact resources they use. Instead of paying for licenses of software that you do not use, you can buy exactly what you want. Instead of providing your customers old ways to receive service and support, you can provide an updated customer experience to rival those of other companies. Companies are transforming. Customers are transforming. Businesses can benefit from transforming their operations to the cloud.” - Ray McKenzie, Founder @ Red Beach Advisors “While the term has become a cliche, moving to the cloud does trigger a transformation in your business. Specifically, it opens a wide variety of options to lower costs and improve customer experience. The pandemic has made this benefit clear, but moving to the cloud means you can access your critical business functions from anywhere and anytime. The cloud is putting to rest the idea that you need to go into the office or maintain a complex security and access infrastructure to operating your business. Moving to the cloud means you might be able to meet a client's need even late at night from your couch, instead of waiting till the next morning or over a weekend. That dramatically accelerates your business. And fundamentally, that business acceleration is the real transformation. With a faster and more responsive business, you can decide faster what works and what doesn't. You can trim waste faster, or decide sooner to double down on a profitable venture. This in turn results in a change in mindset to one that's more decisive and quicker to draw results. Moving to the cloud isn't really about technology -- it's about empowering the humans running the business.” - Rilind Elezaj from MASV “The benefits of moving my business to the cloud have been dramatic, and should be addressed! Due to the pandemic, all of my employees are working remotely, which means they don’t have access to the files on their office computers. Since COVID-19 started, we have moved all of our professional files onto an online database, which can be accessed by every employee on their personal device. Benefits to our business include: being able to access all of our data on the go and on our personal devices, more collaboration because many employees are able to work on one document at the same time, and more security for our files which are backed up on an online server. I would highly suggest more businesses transfer all of their data to cloud-based software!” - Laura Fuentes, Operator of Infinity Dish Read More: 5 Cloud-native Trends Of 2021 Easier, Safer, and Faster processing “We got practically everything processed faster, safer, and easier for all of us in the company as soon as we put everything together in the cloud. We have been using Odoo as our business management tool which is hosted in the cloud. You got everything inside the tool from CRM, timesheet, finance, meeting you named it. All departments are now connected under one roof and it is easier for us to communicate even from within the platform. With all the features, there is no more delay in finishing tasks, communicating between staff, and all these create much faster results for us and satisfy our client expectations. These are all the benefits we are having since moving our business to the cloud.” - Henry Chen from Syncoria Inc Computational power, Advanced security, and cost effective Cloud computing offers a number of benefits for businesses of all shapes and sizes. Contrary to on-premises solutions, a cloud environment gives you the ability to scale your computing power up or down depending on your needs, so you only pay for what you use. This is a cost-effective solution particularly for small businesses, which have a hard time justifying the expense of installing and maintaining their own servers, and over-provision them in order to support seasonal spikes. Cloud providers handle the maintenance and upkeep of hardware and software, freeing up your staff to do other work. I’ve seen businesses experience as much as 80% saving on maintenance and upkeep efforts and expenses after moving to a Full-Cloud solution. That’s money that is now free to use for other purposes, like growing your business! Finally, cloud providers typically offer more advanced security than your own servers, which is something that all businesses should consider, especially in an age where cybercrime is on the rise. If your business is still relying on on-premises servers and storage, it's time to stop. Cloud-based servers can save businesses a lot of money—not to mention headaches—by reducing costs, automating maintenance, and providing a lot more flexibility.” - Fabio Rosato from fabiorosato.com “There are a few benefits to businesses that move to the cloud. Increased security. Not only does the cloud provide solid security, but it also creates backups upon backups upon backups so that if there IS a breach, you don’t actually lose anything. Less responsibility. With the cloud providing your security and a place for you to store customer information, the cloud provider has more of a responsibility to ensure that information is protected than the business. Lower costs. It’s not just numbered on paper, a business that operates in the cloud will see a cost reduction relatively quickly. The cloud also makes it easier for teams to collaborate without the need to be in the same physical location, giving business leaders the ability to hire the best talent from anywhere. It’s the reason that technology firms have excelled in the era of remote work, many companies already had at least a partially remote workforce. The cloud often includes tools that a business may not have had access to before, making the business more efficient and sustainable. All of these benefits, when used properly, lead to one result: Reduced costs for revenue. Every business has a goal to stay in operation, and moving to the cloud is a great way to keep that going.” - Pieter VanIperen, Managing Partner at PWV Consultants “Moving your business to the cloud can pay off with valuable benefits. Some business benefits we’ve realized from operating in the cloud are cost savings, flexibility, improved performance, automatic updates, better security, and ensured business continuity. The cost of operations goes way down when you don’t have to maintain your own data centers and technical team. Being cloud-based lets you scale up or down and add or remove capabilities on the fly when you need to. In the cloud, you can improve interactions and communication due to the increased visibility of data. Keeping in-house systems updated is a tedious task that’s transferred to your cloud provider since they usually take care of them. Research shows that data in the cloud is more secure, probably since cloud providers are data security experts and regularly, proactively update their systems. Finally, the cloud provides disaster management that ensures applications are available during and after critical incidents. We’ve found that operating in the cloud gives us the economic, secure, and continuous service that our business requires.” - Hosea Chang, Chief Operating Officer of Hayden Girls Offers great flexibility “Business Benefits of Moving to the Cloud: One of the best benefits to business, when you move to the cloud, is the flexibility it gives you. The cloud is an obviously flexible environment from which to work, and especially with the rise of remote work these days, it can offer you and your employees a good option for adjusted schedules. No matter if they want to stay at home, travel, or even work from their mobile devices moving your business to the cloud will allow them to do so. In addition to work flexibility, the cloud allows businesses to remain agile and ready to advance or adjust to challenges where necessary.” - Carla Diaz, Cofounder of Broadband Search Scalability and Portability “In cloud storage, elasticity, or the capacity to scale up or down rapidly, is important in order to keep up with demand. If high amounts of traffic are exhibited by an application, the operation will not be impacted since additional servers will be supported automatically. This elasticity essentially implies that, according to what's required, the cloud will automatically provide or unlock.” - Wesley Burger, Marketing Director of CloudTask “The benefits of moving your business to the cloud include cost savings and easier scalability in the future. Cloud-based hosting is usually less expensive than traditional managed hosting which can save your business plenty of money. However, because most cloud hosting accounts are not managed, you would either have to manage it yourself or hire someone to manage it for you. By moving to the cloud, you get the ability to scale your server up or down at a moment's notice without prolonged periods of downtime or transferring of files.” - Haris Bacic, Co-founder @ Pricelisto “The two primary benefits of moving to the cloud are scale and portability. Both are critically important when transitioning from a product to a subscription-based offering. Scaling your business can be a nightmare if your technologies are cloud-ready or cloud-native. With a cloud-native approach, your workloads become portable across cloud providers (AWS, Azure, Google) and much easier to scale up and down for cost.” - Vince Stammegna, Senior Director of Engineering, SaaS at Axway Shift in time allocation, Employee satisfaction, and user adoption “Businesses typically see an immediate increase in employee satisfaction when moving to a modern SaaS-based cloud application. * Businesses should expect to see a shift in time allocation away from sizing and specifications of hardware to problem-solving that is closer to the daily technology experience of employees. * The time to value for cloud solutions is much faster and in most, every case management should see a more rapid user adoption curve and lower project failure rates than previously experienced with planning, building, and deploying on-premise solutions.” - Shadrach White, CEO at cloudPWR Minimized upgrades, migrations and downtime “Benefits of Moving to the Cloud: Speaking as someone that realized the power of serverless application design it has been wonderful. Serverless is where you utilize decoupled cloud services to perform tasks, often in parallel. This has allowed us to scale applications without any fuss and operate at a much lower expense. Before we had to maintain either physical or virtual servers. The operational or maintenance requirements alone were worth the switch. On average the cost to just host 1VM dropped from $100/month to less than $20. This is not to say serverless is perfect. As with every change, there are hurdles you must learn to negotiate. In the end, the tradeoff is more than worth the hassle. The reality is dedicated servers would have similar obstacles to solve as well. Finally, moving to a serverless architecture means you can upgrade pieces as technology evolves. So upgrades and migrations are smaller and downtime minimized.” - Chris Love, Owner @ Love2dev Limitless resource expansion, Flexible pricing “When we talk about cloud hosting, it refers to providing a remote location for server space. This is most commonly used by individuals or businesses who want to build and store their websites with a web hosting provider. However, with cloud hosting, you're not renting actual space on a physical server. Rather, the server is virtual. With cloud hosting, you can expand your resources without limitations, which is especially important if you own a quickly growing site and need to scale. In addition, cloud hosting offers flexible pricing where you're only paying for what you actually use. The uptime and performance are superior as well. Also, the cloud can give you the ability to build stronger partnerships. For example, you can give your customers and affiliates access to your cloud by making your API available. Lastly, the cloud has become more secure than on-premise data centers.” - Chase Higbee, Director of Content @ Atlantic.Net Cost-efficiency and Cloud communication “The foremost benefit to the business is cost-efficiency. The cloud offers a great deal of customization, including the ability to be able to use only a part of the server that is required. Cloud vendors offer pricing that includes charging companies only for energy spent on their own data center. This results in a big-time saving on cost in the long run. The next best thing about the cloud is cloud communication. As opposed to traditional telecom, these can provide seamless access to enterprise networks. Cloud-based virtual phone systems improve customer interaction through smartphones and provide faster voice and data platforms.” - Eric McGee, Senior Network Engineer, TRGDatacenters One Stop Solution for Custom Software Development - Enquire Today See here Reduced Maintenance burden “Business Benefits of Moving to the Cloud: Wondering what the benefits of a cloud-based platform are. Ask anyone with a server at home and you'll quickly learn that the maintenance and upkeep of the hardware and software that make up the server is a time-consuming process that requires very specialized knowledge to do effectively. If the server is keeping track of data such as IP addresses and other important information, any interruption in service can seriously hurt a business more than it would like to own up to. With a cloud-based system, the maintenance is completely taken care of by the hosting company and the servers are set up in a redundant way usually resulting in 99.9% uptime.” - Jason Loomis from Concise Device Reviews Lowers Carbon Emission “Cloud = sustainability (a different angle): Good Morning from Japan… I’ll avoid the obvious benefits of cloud (security, physical space, speed, etc.) and focus on something less focused on, but that’s hugely important both for CSR and business continuity. Sustainability. We’re now seeing cloud platforms advertising themselves as “green”, and that’s no fluke or attempt at market differentiation. Taking a chunk of org-wide energy use out of the house and reassigning it to the cloud provider is an initial saving on energy use. On a larger scale, data centers account for a huge amount of carbon emissions. Moving to the cloud can slash these emissions and, moreover, cloud services can run at least partially on renewable energies. So there’s a net loss in electricity use (and all that implies) and a lowering of carbon emissions. Cloud servers also offer higher utilization rates, which reduces disparate use/underuse of servers located locally. Publicly, you help maximize cloud servers, making them much more efficient. Cloud providers themselves are looking to transition to renewables. AWS has long had such goals and Google is procuring wind and solar at large scale. So, in short, moving to the cloud benefits both the organization’s and its industry’s carbon emissions reduction, and sustainability, efforts.” - Adam Goulston, Japan-based marketer @ Scize The Cloud Makes Our Business Better “We’ve always been big on using the cloud for our business and the advantages we get from it. The cloud frees up our IT people to spend time and money on projects that help our bottom line. Being cloud-based also allows our employees to access data and applications with a connected device from wherever they are. Since employees can work from anywhere, we can hire from anywhere, too, giving us access to a larger pool of talent. Last but not least, working on the cloud means our server usage scales to our current needs which reduces our energy consumption, lowering our carbon footprint, and reducing our power expenses. Freeing up IT resources, untethering employees from the office, and being greener are the best things we’ve been able to do by working from the cloud.” - Todd Ramlin Manager @ Cable Compare Multiple Benefits The main business benefits of moving to the cloud are as follows: *Improved cost-efficiency. * Moving everything to the cloud minimizes the need for purchasing business equipment that they otherwise would have required. The need for on-site servers and software is unnecessary too, which reduces expenditure on IT. *Upgraded security. * By storing business documents on the cloud, provides an additional security safeguard in the event of a disaster. *Flexible work environment. * Cloud computing for businesses broadens the horizons for the ways in which employees can work - including *where* they can work. Having cloud computing provides workers with the flexibility to work from home. - Kevin Parker, Co-Founder of vpnAlert “Clouds allow businesses to grow more rapidly than huge, existing rivals. In the past two years, several organizations have welcomed cloud computing in their businesses. Its on-demand computing refers to a method for accessing information resources over the internet. Here are some cloud computing benefits to the business that are worth mentioning. 1) Increases cost-efficiency 2) Gives flexible pay options 3) Improves collaboration 4) Boost mobility 5) Aids disaster recovery” - Adam Rowles, CEO of Inbound Marketing Agency Quicker and agile to respond business problems Moving to the cloud allows for the IT team to solve problems for the business instead of maintaining a data center. It can be hard to maintain a number of staff on your team that has various skill sets and have the ability to do things like fix database emergencies in the middle of the night. The IT team can often be distracted from solving business problems when they're bogged down with tasks like setting budgets for the year, working on database upgrades, capacity planning, etc. Moving to the cloud allows the IT team to partner with other teams in an organization to assist them in getting new applications up and running, and allows the IT team to support the business instead of running it. The IT team can be quicker and agile to respond to business problems when they aren't burdened by the administrative work that comes along with running their own solution. Provides advanced security Moving to the cloud removes the distraction that comes with focusing on security. Many cloud providers have built-in security features which means that the IT team doesn't have to take the time to focus on security themselves. The IT team can focus their efforts on specific security measures around company applications instead of focusing on their entire database (which they might not have the expertise to handle all on their own). When I used to work in a data center, I had to manually submit logs to be reviewed by an auditor, which was a time-consuming process. Now, that is all taken care of instantly, which would free up my time to focus on other priorities. Lowers maintenance cost Moving to the cloud reduces your overall maintenance costs (when done properly). In order to achieve this, businesses need to focus less on the immediate costs and more of the savings involved over a longer period of time, usually over 5 years. There are often more costs involved in a traditional solution that businesses don't think about, and once you really sit down and understand all the extra money you might spend on staff time, facility utilities, etc. - that's when the cost savings really shines through. There are often hidden cost savings when a business takes a step back and looks at the entire picture. Reduces physical equipment needs Moving to the cloud removes the chance that you have physical equipment that is woefully underutilized. Often when a company is purchasing physical equipment for their data center, they use an approach that results in purchasing more than they need with the hopes that they can grow into it. This often leads to many companies having too much equipment than needed to get the job done. When a company moves to the cloud, the solution can immediately scale up or down depending on the level of usage - meaning less money is wasted on physical equipment. When using a cloud solution, a business is not locked into features that they never end up using - they can instantly remove them from their instance to stop paying for them. There is a lot of flexibility provided to businesses when it comes to features available in the cloud. - Brita Hammer, Digital Marketing Specialist @ Emergent Software “To answer the question of how businesses can benefit from the cloud, one needs to understand the different reasons why a business might move to the cloud, for example, - *Are they moving their applications and network infrastructure to the cloud? In other words, going all-in? * - *Are they using the cloud just for backup? * - *Are they using the cloud just for certain workloads, like big data processing or managing fleets of IoT devices? * - *Are they just using the cloud to host an application or website? * *Everyone knows that a business can reduce costs by being in the cloud. There is often a high initial cost outlay for the adoption, but then costs are dramatically reduced after that. They don’t have to take the cybersecurity risk of managing their own infrastructure in-house, they don’t have to take the risks in planning server capacity needs where failure to correctly estimate requirements can result in long delays while new equipment is ordered, or on the flip side of that, they might have too much capacity which is a waste of money. * *In the cloud, you pay for what you use. In AWS, there is the shared responsibility model. Amazon is responsible for keeping hardware, facilities, etc. secure and maintained, while the user is responsible for securing their own networks and compute and storage resources they deploy there. Businesses using the cloud don’t have to pay people to manage hardware. They don’t have to pay for hardware for storage for a big data “Data Lake” in the cloud-like S3 in AWS, and the service’s high durability means the risk of losing data due to a hardware failure is very low, so businesses that use the cloud for big data can be more secure in the confidence that their data won’t be lost due to a hardware malfunction. Companies that use the cloud for their applications can deploy globally, whereas companies that manage their own data centers can deploy to their data centers. They can still use CDNs like CloudFront, but these are cloud-based, so they are still dependent on the cloud for this fast global reach even if their origin servers are in a private data center. * *There are certain things that just can’t be done without the cloud. For example, AWS has services for quantum computing or controlling satellites and collecting data from them. Businesses in the cloud can benefit from economies of scale that bring capabilities they would not have access to otherwise. * *So after moving to the cloud, a few benefits a business will find are: * 1. *Reduced hardware costs* 2. *Reduced security risks (due to shared responsibility model) * 3. *Reduced labor costs (don’t need hardware expertise in-house) * 4. *Reduced data loss risk* 5. *Global reach for applications* 6. *Access to cloud provider managed services* 7. *Access to capabilities out of reach without the cloud* - Nelson Ford, Founder @ PilotCore System Conclusion Cloud computing helps in streamlining specific industrial activities with improved security. Today cloud is being adopted by millions of companies and looking at the features it is offering to the businesses, a fair case can be made that it would stay dominant in the upcoming years as well. In this blog, we have explored the business benefits of moving to the cloud. It will help organizations to take a much-needed turn in their operations.