Ronda Cilsick, CIO, Deltek, on the key benefits of cloud solutions for firms still living with legacy.
Cloud solutions are invaluable for businesses looking to grow. Expanding teams, increasing customer bases and mergers and acquisitions are all desirable elements of growth and largely depend on the success of one thing: scalability.
As businesses start to grow, especially when growing at speed, margins can become impacted and efficiencies and other ways to scale need to be introduced to keep up with change. Having agile, scalable technology platforms in place can significantly help to ease the headaches associated with growth. Cloud-based solutions can help businesses navigate growth by lowering maintenance costs, reducing risk of downtime, as well as providing a better overall user experience. This means IT teams can spend more time focused on the activities that drive business results and support strategic business priorities, rather than spending time on maintaining and supporting on-premise solutions.
At a time when some firms are still grappling with legacy on-premise solutions, now is the time to eliminate unnecessary complexity and expenditures and move to a simpler and more scalable model. So, what are the key benefits of utilizing cloud solutions?
Cost-effective scalability
Implementing a cloud solution can simplify scalability and give businesses the flexibility needed to futureproof operations. Businesses globally are capitalising on these benefits – with 89% business leaders surveyed by OfCom using cloud computing in 2023 and 11% intending to.
Migrating to the cloud delivers a lower total cost of ownership compared to on-premise solutions – and the more a business grows, the greater these margins become.
When businesses outgrow the capacity of an on-premise solution, they need to invest in new infrastructure and servers to support the organisation. When servers reach and surpass 70% capacity, or drive space is running low, more often than not users will experience a drop in server performance that will make it vital to upgrade.
This is expensive and time consuming. And the time it takes between realising that extra capacity is needed, to putting those new servers into action, can be several months. As a result, burdened IT administrators are often forced to scrape by with the
minimum requirements instead of recommended configurations because of time and budget constraints, which lead to long load times, freezes and software crashes.
In the cloud, businesses can scale solutions at the exact rate needed, meaning they don’t need to invest in IT they aren’t using, but can quickly add more capacity or functionality when it is needed. Further, users can scale with the resources needed, meaning businesses aren’t paying for tools and services that simply are not required. The capabilities needed from IT are highly specific to each organisation – and being in the cloud offers the flexibility to customise the products and services used, tailoring to business needs. This works both ways. With the cloud, businesses can disable functionalities that aren’t used, keeping infrastructure streamlined, relevant and cost-effective.
Cloud solutions also enable teams to use IT resources more strategically, leaving team members to focus on value-add tasks rather than maintaining and growing infrastructure. Instead, they can outsource work to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider, and keep teams focused on developing the business.
Flexible functionality
Using SaaS services doesn’t just make it easier to scale IT capacity as businesses grow; they also make it simpler and quicker to upgrade and add new applications and functionalities to IT infrastructure. As businesses grow, their needs shift and it is vital they review their current systems to ensure they are optimal to driving their growth plans.
CIOs need to stay on top of the latest new technology and how it can be leveraged to make the business more streamlined, as well as staying abreast of the latest updates and patches so they don’t lose performance and functionality from their investments. This can be a large expense to businesses and if CIOs are juggling several balls that mean this is deprioritised – it can at best impede growth, as the business is simply not set up for success without the right technology, and at worse open the system up to security vulnerabilities.
The cloud simplifies the process, as new solutions do not require new hardware upgrades – something that can often be a barrier to innovation and growth. Instead, new patches and solutions can be easily rolled out to all relevant users over the cloud. This means CIOs can ensure they have access to and are implementing the latest functionality, with optimal performance, while maintaining critical security.
Enhanced security
Cloud solutions are typically far more secure than their on-site counterparts. If mission-critical data is stored on a local network and a virus is encountered, there is a real risk that this can later be lost or stolen. With your data in the cloud, these types of threats are significantly reduced.
Many firms struggle with meeting security standards due to a lack of adequate IT resources. Ultimately, at times of growth, this can be resolved by migration to the cloud. Best-practice cloud hosting providers offer dedicated teams of security experts that monitor data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year with security safeguards that typically exceed any on-premises solution.
To futureproof and position business for growth, moving to the cloud is necessary. Cloud solutions will always facilitate growth over legacy, on-premise solutions. With the world moving ever faster, your technology needs to be ready to scale with projected growth – and the cloud can help alleviate this potential business challenge. With frequent audits and performance testing, cloud servers are prepared to meet the needs of evolving firms and deliver optimal performance at a business-critical time.
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