Love it or hate it, cloud computing is here and helping companies become more agile and competitive. There are two common misconceptions about the cloud. The first is it’s only for big companies. The second is it’s only for small companies.
The truth is it’s for everyone regardless of the size of your organization or your industry. That’s like saying that computers are only for big companies – I think most of us know how dumb that is.
Cloud computing has brought capabilities to everyone that only the largest companies could afford in the past. As an example, look at Salesforce.com. Years ago, the only way you could afford a sophisticated CRM system was if you had a large IT staff and budget to make it happen. Today, anyone can afford CRM, whether it’s through Salesforce.com or the myriad other cloud offerings out there.
My company squarely falls in the SMB or SME (small to medium enterprise) camp. We are a distributed company and in the past could not have afforded CRM, a good time and billing system, or a way to easily collaborate on documents, to name just a few business functions. Today, we can get that by signing up for a cloud service and paying for it by the user. We don’t need to buy servers, hire IT staff, worry about backing up our data, or rolling out a desktop application. We just point a browser to a website, log in and work.
UKFast, a UK hosting company, created a cloud computing infographic (below) based on interviews they did with numerous cloud experts showing why SMEs choose the cloud. The infographic shows that the main reasons for using the cloud are Flexibility, Cost savings, Increased efficiency, and Space savings.
I concur based on my experiences. Having the ability to add or remove users quickly is great. Not having to invest in an IT infrastructure makes cash available for other uses. Letting everyone work where they want, when they want and from any device increases productivity dramatically.
We are sold on the cloud. How about you?
Infographic by UKFast Hosting
Photo credit Henriksent
