As the global economy continues its downward trend, the stock market’s rocky course persists, and energy prices are forecasted to soar over the winter months, it may be time for your business to evaluate where to spend money wisely. Let’s discuss where you can get a better return on the money you invest into your business.
As part of a recession-focused series, Andy Horn, CEO of IntraLAN, the enterprise-level IT, technology and critical network provision experts, explains how a digital transformation centred around the cloud can save your business money now and make your business more efficient, people more productive and data securer for years to come.
What are the different types of cloud-based infrastructures?
There is no one size fits all solution for companies’ digital transformations – but there can be a tailored solution that fits your business’s needs. There are three different types of cloud-based infrastructures:
Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS solutions are typically third-party services served over the internet. Examples of SaaS infrastructures include Salesforce and Hubspot.
Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas): IaaS provides infrastructure on a pay-as-you-go basis, providing the customer with only what their business requires. Examples of IaaS solutions include Rackspace Technology and Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS provides businesses with the tools they need to make a digital transformation, including hardware and software. Examples of PaaS include Windows Azure.
Public, Private and Hybrid Clouds – What is the difference?
Cloud computing arrives in three main disciplines. The primary difference between them is how the data is processed and where it is accessible.
Public Cloud – The public cloud can be accessed through the internet, and businesses can take advantage of public cloud services for free or through a paid subscription. Common examples of public cloud models are:
- Google Cloud Platform
- IBM Cloud
Private Cloud – Private cloud models are only available to users within the organisation and are highly secure thanks to firewalls and internal hosting. This type of cloud-based infrastructure is not accessible by third party users.
Hybrid Cloud – Hybrid cloud models fuse private and public cloud infrastructure. They enable connection to both types of clouds for various purposes (depending on business requirements). Examples of this type of cloud-based infrastructure include:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) Outposts
- Azure Arc
- Google Anthos
- Azure Stack
What are the benefits of moving to the cloud?
Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure can initially seem daunting, especially with data loss or corruption concerns. Ensuring your cloud migration is properly supervised with cloud backups, and a storage solution is essential to its success. Before you leap into the unknown, try these benefits on for size:
Cut Costs, Increase Service Capacity
The economic landscape is sketchy at present, and many businesses are looking for ways to become leaner and more agile – moving to the cloud accomplishes that.
Investing in your business is important, whether times are great or in the middle of a recession, as strengthening you company ensures business continuity. Moving to the cloud centralises your data whilst limiting access to only users identified by your organisation.
Additionally, a cloud-based infrastructure minimises IT hardware costs and decreases your business’s reliance on data centres and on-premise hardware – a cost pinch point as energy prices continue to rise.
With a cloud-based infrastructure, you don’t need an IT department, and because services are pay-as-you-go you’re only paying for the resources you’re using, making your business as lean as possible.
Flexibility and Reliability
Does your five-year business plan include scaling up or down? A cloud-based infrastructure allows for effortless scalability and unlimited storage capacity to meet your business’s needs. Moving to the cloud means teams working together collaboratively and efficiently since everything they require is available whenever needed. A scalable strategy will become increasingly critical as businesses add 5G devices and enshrine remote and hybrid working patterns.
On reliability, legacy data processing and storage solutions often meant businesses were at the mercy of outages and downtime. Switching to a cloud-based infrastructure ensures your business keeps advancing even when servers are down because you’ll simply switch to another server, safe in the knowledge that your data and resources are safe and accessible on the cloud.
Sustainability
Moving to a cloud-based infrastructure helps the environment in more ways than one. While it reduces your energy consumption and your carbon footprint, it also helps your business go paperless, reducing your impact on the environment and saving your business’s expense in stationery. A win-win!
Increased Security
The rising threat of Denial-of-Service (DDoS) and other cybersecurity attacks threaten all businesses. Moving to the cloud helps protect your business and its data through comprehensive security measures, including:
- Data encryption that protects from unauthorised access
- Unique security measures for specific cloud providers
- Enhanced security monitoring and audit trails
- Data encryption that protects from unauthorised access
- Unique security measures for specific cloud providers
- Enhanced security monitoring and audit trails
Seamless Operations
Traditional IT architecture is vulnerable to bugs and issues. Unfortunately, finding those issues is often a time-consuming, manual task that could leave vulnerabilities left unchecked until their eventual discovery. With cloud-based infrastructure, IT health monitoring is constant, and fixes begin at the point of discovery. Meaning bugs are often being addressed before users have even realised that there’s a problem. Moving to the cloud not only frees your business from downtime caused by these issues but also saves you time – and we all know time is money.
Conclusion
The digital revolution is in full swing, with everyone from government bodies to corporations making a digital transformation.
Interested in taking your business to the cloud? IntraLAN is your partner for enterprise-level technology, IT and critical network provision. Our team of experts can facilitate a smooth transition from legacy IT architecture to the cloud with peace of mind that you’re in good hands. Contact us today.