As you may know, cloud computing is remote computing—housing your data on many different servers, worldwide, with remote access to files and software and an infinitely scalable (grow-able) infrastructure. What you may not know is that cloud computing has been around for a very long time. While it has only recently become the go-to hot potato, for years many businesses have been utilizing cloud services to run things behind the scenes. There is no foreseeable end to the cloud—it is growing every day as more people realize how powerful, cost effective and useful it really is—and for many small and medium-sized businesses, the sooner they implement cloud services, the better for their bottom line.

Emerging Technologies

As the cloud goes mainstream, businesses everywhere are capitalizing on the new technology—both internally and as a potential area for expansion. The faster you move your business to the cloud, the faster you will be able to incorporate new technological advances into your business model. The longer you wait, the more difficult getting a handle on the new services will become. Start now, start small, and soon enough your business will be launching ahead of your competition. It is not every day that an opportunity presents itself to take a giant business leap forward without any risk to the business’ foundation or to day-to-day operations. You can get cloud services up and running while everything else stays in place then, when you are ready to switch over, do it seamlessly and without any glitches.

SaaS

As I have discussed in a previous post, software-as-a-service is a key component to what makes the cloud so beneficial for businesses. Accessing software from anywhere, paying licensing fees for individuals instead of computer work-stations and eliminating the cost of downtime and maintenance are just some of the reasons the SaaS cloud makes sense. Paying for exorbitantly expensive software and IT support is one of the main factors holding many small businesses back from challenging their larger competition. Check out TurnKey Internet’s cloud SaaS solutions.

Cloud and the Environment

IT infrastructure is extremely costly, from a monetary and environmental perspective. Housing, cooling and powering your business servers requires a large amount of energy. From an individual business’ perspective, this matters, but it also matters on a macro level: providing a networked server cloud for all your clients is far more efficient than providing a dedicated server for each one. As more and more businesses move to the cloud, we will reduce carbon emissions exponentially. That alone is a good enough reason to switch.