Cloud Computing: What’s Holding You Back?
The fastest growing SMEs have adopted the cloud as a way to address four major IT challenges:
- High capital costs;
- Skill shortage;
- Scalability as the company grows, and;
- Innovation as a mature business.
Results are positive Surveys indicate that:
- 53% of SMEs using cloud technologies are more likely to incur revenue.
- 85% of companies believe that the cloud has allowed their company to grow and grow faster.
Organizations are finding that cloud computing provides immediate access to the tools needed to digitally transform their business and improve the customer experience.
Many companies are still reluctant to move to the cloud despite these advantages.
The reluctance to migrate is particularly evident in western Canada,
where cloud adoption was about 25% lower than in the rest of Canada.
So, what’s holding you back?
Safety exposure
Security is cited as number one objection to Cloud for 49% of organizations (IDC 2017). Should you be worried?
Security investments made by leading cloud service providers are significant and have created cloud platforms where security breaches,
due to vendor errors, are rare. In fact, the cloud has proven to be safer than most non-cloud environments.
Network response
One of the main detractors of the cloud for Western Canada customers is the concern that network connectivity is not enough to provide the kind of response and security time that end users are used to.
With the major public cloud service providers located in eastern Canada,
it is understandable that network connectivity options are well understood before proceeding.
There are several networking options to meet the need for high bandwidth,
security and cloud connectivity, including solutions based in Saskatchewan.
Service availability
Service availability, including response times and user downtime,
is a concern due to the perceived loss of control over the computing environment.
To mitigate this concern, public cloud providers provide service levels for all their products with financial credits provided if they are not met.
The solid design of the Cloud environment is such as to guarantee high availability.
In the worst case, organizations can further protect critical applications by configuring them for automatic failover over alternative data centers in the event of a Cloud data center being shut down.
Cloud Costs
There is a general perception that services in the cloud are more expensive than the non-cloud environment.
This is often raised when the comparison between the Cloud and non-Cloud platforms does not accurately reflect all the costs that constitute the non-Cloud infrastructure.
Considering all non-Cloud costs in the table above,
there is a 50% reduction in support and maintenance costs when choosing a Cloud.
When making a financial comparison or cloud ROI,
it is also important to consider the increase in revenue that will occur while driving the results of digital transformation using Cloud services.
To start
It may seem daunting when trying to decide how to get started.
The best place to start often by consulting a trusted partner with experience in Cloud migrations.
Cloud migration requires skills and experience; often the organizations that face this transition alone find them difficult and long.
If you want to know how to start but do not know where to start, reach out and have a coffee.
We can discuss your particular needs and help define a path forward for your organization to embrace everything the cloud has to offer.
