According to Right Scale’s annual State of the Cloud Report for 2019, 91% of businesses used public cloud and 72% used a private one. Cloud hosting for small business provides access to business data and applications from anywhere, at any time, on any device. And, the cloud does it at a price small business can afford compared to the cost of purchasing and maintaining an in-house server.
Collaboration and Remote Work
The cloud allows your team to collaboratively access, edit and share documents regardless of their location. This is especially important in today’s remote work COVID environment. Having data centralized into a single cloud location frees companies up to have hybrid work models or fully distributed workforces.
Scaling and Flexibility
With the cloud, gone are the days of incurring big operating expenses when you had to buy a new server for more space. The cloud allows you to expand your storage needs as your company grows. With cloud hosting, you can scale bandwidth and processing power as your needs go up and down for use. If you have times of peak demand, you can scale up and scale back down again during your slower times.
Automatic Updates
With cloud hosting, your cloud provider is responsible for keeping your devices and software updated. When you run all of your software from in-house servers, it’s up to you to keep everything secure and up to date.
Security
In the early days of cloud hosting, security was a concern. And while hacks still do happen, in many ways the cloud is a lot more secure than onsite servers. With onsite servers, you are responsible to secure and monitor your network against hackers. With a cloud provider, they manage all the security updates and tasks on their end.
Backup and Disaster Recovery
Creating a data backup system requires expertise, not to mention a lot of time and money. In the past, only the big companies could afford to do this. With cloud hosting, backups and disaster recovery are easy because your hosting provider will have redundant systems in place to guard against hardware failure. Your cloud provider will perform routine automated backups. These safeguards will protect you in the event a cyberattack does occur.
Cost Savings
As mentioned, hosting your data in the cloud in both the short- and long-term is much more economical for the small business. Not only will you gain access to the best technology for hosting and security, you’ll get access to it at a fraction of the price as you would with the investment and maintenance of an onsite server for hosting.
In summary, cloud computing offers so many benefits to small businesses that it’s hard to imagine why a business would not use it. Cloud hosting has leveled the playing field for the small business in many ways and made technology available that was once only accessible to larger enterprise companies. At MyTek, we can partner with you to implement the best cloud hosting for small business solution to meet the needs of your business.
MyTek, an Arizona managed IT services company, has helped many organizations migrate and successfully leverage Teams. Contact us to learn more.