As far as technology is concerned, significant changes initially tend to leave sizeable chunks of users confused and distrustful of ‘the new ways.’ For many folks, even those who are fairly tech-savvy, it can take years until they are ready to adopt a new device or feel safe enough to leap onto a new online platform!
But the time is now for cloud computing. It is here to stay. Those who won’t adopt it will be left behind.
Beware blind faith though. Simply lifting and shifting your assets to the cloud is not going to save you money, nor is it going to realize you the full potential of cloud computing.
Even though cloud computing is still relatively fresh, it’s already managed to stockpile quite a track record of efficiency. Here are a couple of distinct areas you should consider:
Scalability – This is particularly important to small companies that need to grow at a manageable pace. Thanks to the simple workloads based on consumption only, SMBs can now stay efficient and dynamic with their technology spend.
Disaster Recovery – Data backups, server clusters, geo-redundancy is now the provider’s burden. Azure, for example, provides you native rack redundancy and Office 365 provides you native backup. A much cheaper alternative than having your IT teams worry about that.
Cost – You are going to save on hardware costs. You are going to save on traditional licensing costs.
Cost (really) – You are going to spend all that you have saved in the first ‘Cost’ bullet point on consumption, unless you plan your workloads properly and decide how to best leverage the cloud. Modernizing your traditional on-premises applications is a must, otherwise you will be faced with sticker shock.
Trust – You will just have to trust that your provider can be trusted. Yes, they have all your data and yes they can share it.