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The cloud is helping businesses become more productive, more organized and better at saving money, according to Matthew Porter, co-founder and CEO of Contegix, a company that provides high-level managed hosting and cloud computing services for applications and infrastructure.
Porter told IT TechNewsDaily six ways that cloud computing could benefit your business.
Creating jobs— Startups and midsize companies are beginning to drive employment. Both are using cloud computing to support core aspects of their business model — from web presence to transactional processing — and supporting new innovation. Look at NoWait, a Pittsburgh-based startup shaking up the casual dining experience by providing restauZodiacs an easy way to take reservations and affording customers a way to go out to busy eateries using SMS as a primary communication vehicle for table availability. NoWait’s success is heavily dependent upon cloud computing by virtue of the application’s concept.
Mobility— This is more than just your iPhone or Android. Cloud computing allows people to make their digital lives accessible when needed, regardless of where they are. Calendars, email, documents and other data stored in the cloud means you are no longer tethered to a desktop while sharing information with co-workers. This is driving collaboration and quicker response times supporting the requirement of real-time feedback in today’s agile business environment.
Effective applications migration — Cloud computing allows IT developers to have everything they need to quickly and easily develop and deploy applications in the cloud without having to purchase, configure and maintain hardware, and without having to program applications for a specific underlying infrastructure service. A good cloud provider will offer cloud services that make it easy for people to migrate physical hosts to virtual hosts, use approved appliances and create templates through a well-established and understood set of tools.
Productivity —With the cloud, you can transfer responsibility of one or more aspects of your IT infrastructure to your cloud provider. By outsourcing all or part of your infrastructure and its management, you are able to focus on the aspects of your business that make your product or services unique instead of the things you must have to operate effectively.
Save money — The advantage of a robust cloud usage strategy can also translate into savings. You buy less hardware. You reduce capital expenditures for the hardware. Instead, you rent cloud computing resources as needed — scaling up and down as necessary. This allows you to save money for barely used resources by buying only what is needed and when it is needed. More important, managed cloud providers can help reduce overhead of system administration of these cloud resources, and thus reduce money spent on non-value-creating work
Green technology — Cloud computing can save energy. Cloud computing providers are usually deployed in highly efficient data centers that are measured and actively monitored for power usage. Users of cloud computers are often only using services and compute when needed rather than running energy-consuming machines at all times, even when unnecessary.
