When it comes to IT infrastructure and business operations, most chief information officers (CIO’s) want to achieve three main things;
1. Minimize cost while improving efficiencies
2. Minimize and mitigate risks
3. Improve alignment of IT infrastructure with business strategies and operations
To achieve these 3 objectives, cloud adoption presents itself as the best solution.
According to TechRepublic, 69% of enterprises are migrating business-critical applications such as ERP applications to the cloud. Despite the various concerns that come with migrating mission-critical applications to the cloud, most businesses are still making the leap and adopting various cloud computing architecture that best fits their needs.
Why? What are the benefits of migrating to the cloud?
1. Reduced costs
If your business has more than one on-premise server, then you know that the costs of running and maintaining a data center are quite high. These costs include the initial cost of acquiring the hardware, power/electricity costs, bandwidth, memory, frequent software upgrades, repairs and maintenance, hiring technicians e.t.c
The cost of upscaling due to unexpected demand such as adding more memory or bandwidth is also proving to be time consuming and expensive. These costs distract and divert resources from focusing on strategies that will grow the business.
This is one of the main reasons why decision-makers are making the decision to migrate to the cloud and acquire managed solutions from cloud service providers like ourselves to undertake these operations
2. Better guarantee on data security
Is the cloud more secure than having my physical servers on-premise?
Yes! Laptops, systems or physical servers can be tampered with, stolen or damaged due to human error or malice at any time leading to loss of data and revenue. Breaching cloud security measures whether private or public is difficult and with the cloud, your data will always be available.
Security concerns concerning public cloud especially can be managed by implementing proper user management and password policies.
3. Higher efficiency
The goal of any IT department is to continuously improve the efficiency of operations in the entire organization while reducing costs.
The cloud offers higher processing capabilities and fast throughput than traditional servers. The cloud provides Data Intelligence that can provide valuable insights about business operations that will make it more data-driven in decision making and day to day operations. This makes organizations more competitive.
4. Scalability
For most enterprises, being able to scale up or down on demand is critical to business success. With traditional servers or on-premise critical applications, businesses may plan for an unexpected increase in traffic or demand by reserving additional resources such as an extra server that you may never even use!
With the cloud, adding resources such as memory or bandwidth can be done within minutes and once you no longer require the resources, your service provider can easily remove the resources so that you only pay for the resources you use.
This pay as you go model is attractive and is one of the main reasons why you should move to the cloud.
5. Improved collaboration
With the cloud, teams can work remotely as they can access business systems anytime, anywhere with an internet connection. It can reduce the number of workers that must be on-premise which reduces costs for the organization.
Work teams can also easily share information and collaborate on projects in real-time which increases efficiency and productivity.
6. Service availability
For mission-critical business applications, service availability is crucial. On-premise systems frequently experience downtime due to many reasons such as power outages, hardware or software malfunctions e.t.c which can lead to serious repercussions and losses to the organization.
The cloud ensures service availability as long as you have a reliable internet connection.
With technical support that is available 24/7 such as Message Labs Africa, service availability is even more so guaranteed.
7. No need for backup
Traditional servers require backup storage or a disaster recovery plan in case of natural disasters or damage which may be complex and costly. Most businesses just go as far as using the cloud as a backup for their on-premise applications.
Migrating to the cloud ensures that your data is always available and requires no backup.
8. Variety
Cloud adoption now offers many alternatives that businesses can choose from. Apart from Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS), businesses can opt for Software as a Service(SaaS) and Platform as a Service(PaaS) cloud models depending on the business-critical applications. Businesses can also choose between public, private or hybrid cloud infrastructure.
Cloud service providers have different cloud solutions with a variety of features as compared to a few years ago.
9. Flexibility
The cloud allows businesses to monitor their operations with real-time updates and offers mobility such that you can access your systems at any time.
10. Meeting client needs
Cloud adoption is recommended for businesses with clients who require fast deployment and application implementation which may be difficult to do with on-premise business-critical applications/systems.
You should also move to the cloud if there is a need for multi-region infrastructure that may be necessitated by clients who want to expand to other locations.
So there you have it. 10 main reasons why businesses are migrating to the cloud. Are you convinced?
Message Labs Africa is a leading cloud solutions provider that can help you migrate your business-critical applications to the cloud. We help businesses with on-premise servers adopt the cloud by simply virtualizing their physical servers through Pepea Cloud Server Hosting. This process only takes a few hours hence minimizing disruption of operations. Some of the benefits our clients enjoy include;
Benefits of Pepea Cloud Server Hosting
Uptime & Security – One of the primary reasons for choosing a virtual server solution is to ensure the uptime and strong performance of your applications in the face of demands from high traffic volumes and resource-heavy site activity (e.g., from transactions and large databases). Our data center ensures you have guaranteed service availability and continuity.
Geo-redundant data centers for another layer of security. Meaning that they not only back up your files but they also back up the servers to other data centers in a different location. That should give you peace of mind that if something drastic were to happen to one of the data centers, your data is safe and secure at an entirely different location.
Your server will benefit from the security and ambient conditions (cooling, humidity controls, etc) that our data centers offer.
We undertake tests at regular intervals to ensure that you can recover your critical data should you need it.
Added security with secure communication between Offsite server and client installations.
A highly efficient and effective support system that ensures the solution works for you at all times. We have a 24 x 7 x 365 team of experts that you can rely on day or night to respond to your queries.
Manageability – Customers have access to their servers for maintenance.
Bespoke Optimization – Our hosting plan gives the client the option to configure the set up to achieve a bespoke and fully optimized platform. You can choose, not only the hardware specification you want but also the software configurations you require to run the site as effectively as possible, including the operating system, database, and other applications (whilst also taking advantage of root access to the server).
Scalability – Our hosting plan provides the resource headroom to allow your applications to function effectively in the event of any fluctuations in traffic volumes
Visit our website to find out more where you can request a callback from our seasoned team or request for our service trial or demo.
