If you have been following any sort of tech news for the past couple of years, you will have probably had your ears bent with the amazingness of cloud computing solutions. In recent years, this technology has had so much vibe put behind it that you would think it was the best thing since that guy invented sliced bread.
Well, to be quite honest – and we apologize beforehand for bending your ears a little further – cloud computing really is an amazing technology. As a business owner you should be well aware of the advantages you get from this new-ish technology; if you don’t, let’s go ahead and have a look at some of them.
Of course, we could simply go through a list of items that show the generic uses of cloud computing, but instead we will take it one step further and see some real life problems you encounter as a business owner and how they can be resolved with this technology.
Device Independence
Remember the days when you had to lug your laptop around the city, or even the country, because you had all your precious data on it? Well, now you don’t need to do that anymore. As long as you have an internet connection, you could be anywhere between Juneau and Florida and needn’t worry about where you can access your data from.
The cloud allows you to move around without being tethered to any one single device.
Opening Doors to the Latest Technologies
A great advantage businesses get from moving to the cloud is exposure to latest technologies. Let us be honest, no business likes to invest in new technology just because it is out there. As a matter of fact, we all know of that guy that sits in the back of the office working on that single application that no one else can figure out because he is the only one left that can understand the obsolete technology – but he has become indispensable because there is so much data stored on that single device and only he can pull it out.
Well, with cloud computing, there will be no technology lagging. The companies that provide the cloud hosting services make sure they are up to date on technologies because,
- They have to make sure you the clients have it or you will seek other hosting providers and,
- Because they need to keep updating their soft- and hardware to protect themselves (and you) from being attacked.
This means, you will always have the latest version of software at your disposal.
Real Time Snap Shots
If you need to get a report that shows where you stand right now, in real time, you can do so with the cloud. As all your data will be accessible to all your reporting software, you will have all the information in a matter of minutes to help you make the right decisions.
And it’s not just you; all your employees can access and share the latest information to help them perform better at their jobs, too.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Prevent Theft
How would you like to have an application that would take in all your day’s transactions and then sift through it to see if any of your employees were being a little dishonest?
Well, if you own a restaurant and send all your POS (point of sales) data to the cloud you will be able to have the data analyzed to see if anyone is pocketing your money through artificial intelligence. If one of your employees has one too many voids each day or your bartenders are getting too high a tip every night – you can rest assured they are giving your stuff away for free and pocketing payments at a discounted rate.
The AI software will be able to track these anomalies for you.
No More Data Disasters
Not too long ago there were these safes and vaults in businesses that were used to keep data locked in. They would be recorded or backed up on some primitive devices (remember those data tapes?) and be kept in the hopes that fires and floods wouldn’t destroy them. Well, it didn’t happen often, but when nature struck – she hit hard and no safe could keep her from washing everything away.
Today you don’t have to worry about such a thing. The risk to your data is spread over at least two servers that are remotely located from one another and can be recovered within a matter of hours. Of course that doesn’t mean that Mother Nature can’t hit all the servers at once, but in that case data would be the last thing you would be worrying about.
Costs
Saving money is the smartest way of making money. Storing data in, and accessing data from, the cloud means you will have no worries about data administration, no overhead to think of, no IT staff payroll to consider (or you will have a highly reduced one) … you leave it all to your hosting provider.
We could go on and list dozens of more reasons why you should make the move to the cloud ASAP, but these should be enough to convince you, as they are the most important ones.
