Companies that take a strategic approach to adopting cloud computing services are strengthening their future position in their own marketplace. Your customers or clients are already there – riding high in the cloud for personal computing as well as within their own businesses. If you don’t join them, you may be saying goodbye to them.

That’s how cloud computing services can save your business. Properly incorporated into your IT mix, the cloud can:

• Make you more competitive.
• Make you more productive.
• Enable you to embrace opportunity.
• Put you on a more profitable financial footing.
• Improve your customer relationships and loyalty.

Let’s take a closer look at the details.

• The pay-as-you-go nature of cloud computing services offers distinct budgetary and planning benefits, especially for large organizations operating in complex multi-location environments, perhaps in multiple countries.

• The cloud gives you real-time internal and external access to information, regardless of time zone. You have the agility to respond quickly to sudden opportunities or challenges or more significant directional changes. And you have the ability to be proactive in developing new products, testing them and getting them to market faster.

• Improved collaboration. The more spread out you are, the harder this can be. It’s prohibitively expensive and a big time-waster to pull people together physically to collaborate on any type of project, whereas cloud computing services enable your people to convene any time from anywhere, working productively as if they were in the same room.

They can work individually on projects according to their own schedules, yet all team members have immediate access to their new work. You’re making better use of everyone’s time.

• The growing number of employees working remotely can exacerbate potential collaboration problems. But look at it from the positive side: cloud computing services facilitate exactly the kind of transactional environment employees want. That makes you a preferred employer when it comes to attracting and retaining top-flight people throughout your enterprise, not just in IT.

• Scalability. Have you ever watched a cloud in the sky? It’s constantly in flux, reconfiguring itself in response to the sun and the wind. In today’s business environment, your enterprise has to function in that same way, essentially reinventing yourself on a moment’s notice. Cloud computing services give you essential elasticity.

• Cloud computing services are notoriously less costly. When you migrate workloads to the cloud, you free your company of myriad capital and operations expenses. You can significantly streamline data centers by virtualizing functions or outsourcing provision and/or management. You’re shifting out-of-pocket costs to operations, so you can account for them in a different way. You’re operating more cost-effectively.   

• The same holds true for disaster recovery planning and execution. Cloud computing services can provide vastly more effective and reliable systems at a fraction of the cost. Plan B is available instantly if you suffer an isolated breakdown or a massive disaster, but it’s not a cost unless you need it. And it’s much easier to comply with increasing governmental and industry regulations.

• Modernization. As a company, you’re either moving forward or moving backward. Cloud computing services can relieve the financial and functional pressures brought on by aging legacy systems that are no longer enough and simply cannot be integrated well with the latest technologies you need to grow and prosper.

• A greener future. Transforming away from traditional data centers can significantly reduce energy usage, making you greener as well as more cost-effective. Yes, you’re just shifting the energy usage problem to the data centers managed by your cloud provider, but while they’re working to resolve those issues you can be more efficient and more sustainable.

Your enterprise cannot survive without the most capable, reliable IT foundation. But IT isn’t your company’s raison d'être. Cloud computing services enable you to direct maximum human and other resources to building what makes your company great. 

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