Ten reasons why your business should move to the cloud

The cloud gives you access to enormous computing power immediately

Ordering servers to operate behind a firewall can take months. For a business that needs to react to change and get products out of the door quickly, you do not have time to wait for the IT department to order and configure a new server when a virtual one can be delivered instantly.

There is no set up time to operate in the cloud

Technology such as WANdisco’s Fusion active replication make it easy to move large volumes of data to the cloud whilst continuing with transactions, enabling companies to move critical applications and processes seamlessly. Setting up servers can take three to six months.

It’s cheaper

Large cloud providers like Amazon Web Services benefit from huge economies of scale and are therefore able to offer greater computing power at a lower cost.

It’s flexible

In the cloud you only pay for what’s being used and don’t have to pay for unused services. With servers you need to pre-buy your capacity and plan for the phasing out of equipment. A cloud based infrastructure removes that headache.

There are no hidden costs

No additional staff need to be trained, there are no additional power requirements and no additional space needed for server storage.

It’s integrated

The cloud provides a common platform for integration across infrastructure services with WANdisco’s Fusion enabling WAN-scope active data synchronisation of different storage systems into one place.

It’s scalable

With servers you have to prepare the infrastructure to cope with peak traffic (such as retailers facing seasonal fluctuations at Christmas) even if that means you don’t use that extra capacity for the rest of the year. Relying on a cloud based infrastructure means you can cope with changes in demand with greater agility.

It gives back control to the user

The increase of remote working and employees using their personal phones and tablets for work has created security and compliance headaches for many IT departments. The cloud creates a single environment to enable Single Sign On allowing IT departments to easily manage user accounts across multiple devices.

The probability of failure is low

There is no single point of hardware failure in cloud computing. The odds are in your favour that there will not be a catastrophic data loss in your storage – that risk is much higher on a single dedicated server.

It’s more secure

Moving to the cloud offers a chance to upgrade security making it much more secure than on site servers. Cloud providers benefit from more specialised staff and place a greater emphasis on security.