Top 10 Benefits of Cloud Computing for SMEs

According to recent data, the UK is estimated to hold 5.5 million small to medium enterprises (SMEs), highlighting their significant role in the economy (Finder, n.d.). SMEs should be focused on increasing growth, whilst maintaining a commitment to cost effectiveness. Cloud computing is an innovative way to drive profit, collaboration, and scalability within these SMEs and can provide a more reliable solution to disaster recovery.

What Is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing is the instant usage of computing services over the internet, also known as, ‘The Cloud’. These services can include servers, storage, databases, software, applications, email, software development, intelligence and more! Forget buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, you can access this all from the cloud.

What Are The Benefits Of Cloud Services?

1. Flexibility and Elasticity: When using cloud computing, pre-installed resources for peak business levels are not necessary, instead, cloud computing allows you to scale resources up or down depending on business growth changes.
2. Cost Savings: No upfront investment is needed for hardware and software, this allows your business to work on more of a pay for what you consume model and puts less roadblocks in front of business growth.
3. Staff Flexibility: Working from home? Working abroad? No worries. Cloud computing allows all data to be accessed at all times from anywhere, and staff satisfaction to remain high.
4. Robust Security: If you have ever had your office broken into, or damaged, you will know just how devastating it is when paper data is lost and servers are smashed. Cloud computing usually prides itself on having exceptional security, using measures such as data encryption and regular security updates.
5. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: Backup and recovery options are usually included in some way within cloud solutions or can be an added extra. This ensures that your data is safe in any situation.
6. Less IT Maintenance: When using cloud solutions, the responsibility of updates usually falls on the cloud provider, reducing the load on your IT team.
7. Automatic Updates: Most cloud solutions automatically update to the latest software versions, increasing the time that you can spend focusing on your business.
8. Environmental Sustainability: Less hardware, less electricity, and less waste…what’s not to like? Storing data in the cloud means that there is less need for equipment such as racks and servers, therefore creating less waste when they inevitably need replacing, and less need for constant power.
9. Stay Ahead of Competitors: SMEs now have access to the latest technology that was once only kept for large corporations, helping them to have a chance at even competing with the large corporations.
10. Effortless Collaboration: No matter where your staff are, they can collaborate on one document, in real time, together.

Types of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing can be broken down into 3 categories:

1. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): IaaS offers access to networking capabilities, virtual or dedicated hardware, and data storage. IaaS provides the greatest flexibility and control over your IT resources, closely resembling the traditional IT infrastructure that many IT departments and developers are accustomed to.
   Examples: Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud.

1. Platform as a Service (PaaS): PaaS eliminates the necessity of handling the underlying infrastructure, such as hardware and operating systems, enabling you to concentrate on deploying and managing your applications. This boosts your efficiency by freeing you from concerns about resource procurement, capacity planning, software maintenance, patching, and other routine tasks associated with running your application.
   Examples: SAP Cloud Platform, Zoho Creator, Heroku

1. Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS delivers a fully managed product by the service provider, typically referring to end-user applications like web-based email. With SaaS, you don’t need to worry about service maintenance or underlying infrastructure management. Your focus is solely on how to utilise the software.
   Examples: Dropbox, Mailchimp, Zoom, Trello, Slack

Key Takeaways

• Cloud computing can increase productivity and business coherence by providing a solution that allows for virtual management of technical infrastructure, applications, software, and more, with access from anyone anywhere.
• There are multiple benefits of cloud computing, driving a competitive edge, at an affordable and flexible price.
• 3 types of solutions are available: IaaS, PaaS & SaaS depending on your businesses needs

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Reference:

Finder. (n.d.). Small business statistics. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.finder.com/uk/business-banking/small-business-statistics