How the Cloud is Creating Global Opportunities for Local Businesses
The cloud has long been touted as a savior for casual file sharing via programs like DropBox, iCloud, and Google Drive. As an Engadget reader, I'd assume you use cloud services on a regular basis to share photos with friends and family and backup your iPhone. Although you know the importance cloud technology plays in your personal life, you may not be quite as aware of the benefits it has to offer your small business.
According to Right Scale's State of the Cloud survey, 63% of enterprises surveyed are using a private cloud computing system. If you have hopes of taking your business global someday, it might just be in your best interest to follow their lead. Here are five ways your small business can find more opportunities for global expansion by making the switch to cloud computing.
1. Bottom line savings are possible
Businesses see a decrease in costs when switching their storage to the cloud as they are able to do more with less. An article on PC Mag reports that some small businesses have saved over $4,000 in upfront costs after switching. Savings like this are possible because costs for things like installation, upgrades, hardware, and IT plummet as a result of operations moving to a virtual location rather than an in-office location.
2. HR has increased flexibility in hiring
Remote work has become the ideal employment situation for many sought after candidates. When important content is inaccessible from outside of the office, it's impossible to offer a remote work option to every talented candidate in your industry. By taking your storage operations to the cloud, you significantly increase your HR team's ability to negotiate comfortable remote working contracts with the candidates they want to hire most.
3. Additional opportunities are created for client collaboration
If you're a local company that currently stores all data and information on an internal server, it can be difficult to branch out to work with clients from outside of your state due to the inability to securely share important files and data.
Storing your sharable documents on the cloud will help your clients more easily access the things you need to work together no matter where your offices fall on a map. Business News Daily explains how the cloud provides a safer platform for data storage in their article on data security.
4. Scalability is possible on a corporate level
Cloud data is scalable, which is important when it comes time to change storage needs on a corporate level. When a business switches to cloud storage, it no longer has to take time and money to upgrade servers and expand storage needs. The best part is, a storage change with the cloud is often times immediate.
5. Expansion becomes cost effective
An obvious step in taking your small business global is to create additional offices or hubs for your work in additional areas. The problem is, costs involved with building out additional offices in new locations are incredibly high and often times unrealistic for small business owners. When you take your storage operations to the cloud, you lose the need to build an actual office in new locations as your new employees can simply work remotely or from a rented room in a co-working space like Impact Hub.
Making your move to the cloud may sound a bit intimidating, but it's actually much easier than you may think. Cloud software companies have refined their data transfer systems to a point where the process of moving your important content away from your current server and to a cloud storage platform is fairly simple on your end.
If you're looking to make the switch to cloud computing, start by finding a solid Cloud vendor to help you. Cloud Spector recently conducted a survey to find the top cloud vendors available to help you make the move. The leading vendor in the survey was 1&1, and you can check out the survey results here to see where other top providers lie in the rankings. If you're not sure what to look for in a vendor, Business News Daily offers up an awesome guide here.
If you have any thoughts or questions about moving your storage to the cloud, I'd love to hear them! Let me know in the comments below.
