'Moving to the cloud' is changing the way SMBs work

In recent years, the CEOs of many small and mid-sized businesses are not only looking at technological innovations as a way to produce more efficient product solutions. They also see them as a pathway for more collaboration and creating relationships.

According to Spiceworks’s 2020 State of IT report, enterprises with 1,000 to 4,999 employees will likely increase IT budgets in 2020. This report also states that at least 30% of the total IT budgets spent will go to cloud-based services.

It is the cloud’s “ability to extend” that brings more businesses to cloud environments. Some companies use the cloud as a route to enter new markets. This has paved the way even for a few heavily regulated industries, which treat more sensitive customer data, to adopt new cloud technologies.

For example, let’s consider the banking industry. Initially, banks were particularly reluctant to adopt cloud computing because of security concerns. However, with the technical sophistication it provides, more financial service organizations are now embracing the cloud to deliver innovation, customer satisfaction, and security.

MarketsandMarkets, a B2B researcher, reportedly predicted that the finance cloud market size would grow from USD 9.89 billion in 2016 to USD 29.47 billion by 2021, at an estimated Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 24.4%.

Wondering why cloud computing is expected to see such growth? Let’s look at some ways cloud computing is revolutionizing the way the SMBs and their CEOs operate.

Streamlined remote work

One prime benefit to small and mid-sized businesses with the advancement of cloud services is their ability to be mobile.

“I can travel anywhere and take my work with me.”

What would be your first reaction if someone said this to you ten years ago? Effective remote work is a reality now, thanks to cloud computing. Small business owners in the last few years have changed their focus from “office time” to “productivity.”

With Smart Phones in every hand, and the much evolved mobile applications, as well as the rise of the popular co-working model, many businesses are ready to adopt a dynamic work model to bring in agility, flexibility, and intelligence.

Increased scalability

The best thing about moving to the cloud is its scalability—you can start slow and grow when your business is ready.

A few years back, start-ups had to invest actively in their infrastructure from the beginning and had to pay for any unused resources too. Moreover, when they grew beyond that size, they had to rebuild or move to a new service.

With the on-demand computing services in the cloud, many businesses enjoy the convenience of paying only for what or when they need, knowing they can extend whenever they want to scale up or extend their service. This shift reduces unnecessary costs and allows business leaders to focus on their daily jobs instead of worrying about the infrastructure.

Much improved redundancy

In earlier days, the disaster of a server failure could put entire operations on hold until the server is repaired and restarted.

Now, with the emergence of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), companies are resilient enough to continue working, even through equipment failure. Many now make use of server-clustering technology and disaster recovery solutions to ensure business continuity.

In server-clustering, whenever there is a disruption or a failure in one system, the other elements take over and functionality is re-allocated to another workable system. In most cases, the company’s users will never come to know about the failure.

Enhanced Collaboration

Cloud computing allows people to easily collaborate and contribute no matter where they are.

Before cloud computing was common, a document creation flow used to look like this: one person writes the article; sends it to another person for additions and edits. That person then sends a new version of the file back with updates and feedback to work further on it. This tedious back and forth continues until the content is complete, leading to several versions created and the potential for mix-ups along the way.

With cloud-based document collaboration software, such as WorkDrive, any file can be stored online for all employees to access and make changes whenever. This saves time, effort, and avoids the possibility of multiple people making multiple changes simultaneously. Most importantly, every version is backed up without creating multiple copies of the same file.

The future of business with cloud computing

In the coming years, revenues for small and mid-sized businesses are expected to get higher and higher, and so are their IT budgets and the investments in cloud services.

Cloud service providers should capitalize on this and continue introducing more innovative products. While doing that, they should keep in mind the challenges the SMBs face in the evolving market.