Do you remember the days when we all had to copy documents onto floppy disks or flash drives in order to use them at home? Or when we all used to email ourselves important files in order to have them backed up? Thankfully those days are gone and we can credit the rise of cloud technologies for the change. But, aside from streamlining simple office tasks, cloud technology provides several truly powerful growth advantages for small businesses, including:
1. Decreased Costs
Cloud based services save small businesses on many expenses, including server upkeep, utilities, software licensing, hardware, and space. While there is a significant upfront cost to overcome, in the long-term the decreased costs associated with cloud based services make them a highly affordable option to consider.
2. Improved Security
We’ve all heard that ‘knowledge is power’. Along the same lines is the modern axiom, ‘data is gold’. Keeping that data secure, however, has to be a priority for your own company’s wellbeing and for the safety, security, and privacy of any employees, customers, or clients you work with. Cloud technology puts your company’s data securely offsite and prevents the physical theft of hard drives or servers that contain this information. With proper security procedures at different access points, cloud technology is by far the safer option when it comes to company information.
3. Instant Collaboration
Keeping files up to date during collaborative projects used to be agonizing, requiring constant shuffling back and forth, saving, archiving, rewriting, renaming, and collating. Today, however, files exist in one cloud space and can be instantly accessed and edited by anyone on the team from anywhere in the world. Versions are backed up, rewriting is prevented, and the system itself warns users if a file is currently in use. This way your team can focus on the work, not managing the troublesome documents that work lives in.
4. Flawless Reliability
Managing servers in small companies, as well as data backups, is hardly a cost-effective solution, and even small errors can be catastrophic. Cloud servers, on the other hand, are managed by some of the most powerful tech companies in the world and offer a level of reliability that has never before been seen in the workplace. These systems are heavily protected, keep themselves up to date, and provide critically important backup and recovery capabilities in case of disaster or data loss.
5. Room to Expand
And, finally, the best part about cloud computing is that it gives companies total freedom to grow without the worry of expanding their IT infrastructure or buying additional server racks. All the information is kept elsewhere, in the cloud, and if more space is needed it can simply be purchased. Companies have literally unlimited resources at their disposal, providing a framework for massive growth at a rapid pace over any timeline.
