Payroll Software and People Management blog

Cloud Computing, it's time!

Posted by Anthony Pignatiello on Thu, Feb 26, 2015 @ 09:00 AM

iStock_000030561060LowCloud computing in recent years has exploded to be terminology that we are all familiar with. Although for many of us this new technology is not easily understood, what businesses must understand though is there are many positive ways cloud technology can help your business excel, saving you time and money and giving you peace of mind in the event of a disaster.

A recent survey conducted by Infosys found that Australia businesses are leading the way in accepting cloud computing(1), this shows there is obvious benefits to cloud computing, but how can you use cloud computing to help your business and ultimately increase your bottom line.

 Here are our top five benefits on why your business should start cloud computing now.

1) Infrastructure and Upgrades
Because technology is always changing, and so is the infrastructure that goes with it. The cost of updating your infrastructure is always a large financial investment. By using a dedicated cloud company which continuously purchases state of the art equipment to ensure your service is reliable in an environment, eliminates the need for maintaining hardware and associated IT administration. Most of the cloud solutions offer upgrades for free as part of the package and can easily be downloaded via the internet or even automatically completed to help with easy software integration.

2) Capital Cost
Businesses are quickly waking up to the fact that cloud solutions make good business sense when it comes to cost management. Managing in-house IT infrastructure and operating costs are the main reasons that businesses are turning to the cloud. With so many cloud providers in Australia, the cost of this service has become very competitive. Evaluating your business requirements for a cloud service before approaching providers will ensure the service you will be provided with matches your company needs. When it comes to cloud services cheapest may not be the best option.

3) Disaster Recovery
Implementing a system of backups where your data is stored both on your system and on the cloud is a perfect contingency plan for your business. Make sure that your cloud provider has a Disaster Recovery and business continuity plan in place for those “what –if” scenarios. Ensuring your Cloud Computing provider can support your business if a disaster does occur is also a prerequisite.

4) Security
Security concerns are still one of the greatest apprehensions that businesses have in regards to using cloud technology. Trusting your valuable data to a third party does have risks. But by acquiring knowledge about the physical and technical controls of the data centre, it’s country location and who can access it, is a good way to put you at ease that your data is safe. Ensuring that both the data centres’ and it’s anti-virus software and firewalls are updated will help secure your data.

5) Performance/Availability
In today’s world having fast, secure access to your data when you want it is essential. To achieve this select a cloud provider that includes a multi-server environment or multi location access. Ask if your cloud provider can easily increase its capacity when you need it without interrupting your workflow is essential for business to run smoothly.  

To discover more about Sage MicrOpay’s Private Cloud solution and how it can help your business, you can find out more information on our website.

1) Source: www.theage.com.au/it-pro/cloud/cloud-computing-is-now-mainstream-and-australia-is-ahead-say-new-reports-20141103-11fze9.html

Topics: private cloud, Cloud Security, disaster recovery, Cloud Costs, Cloud Computing