Moving your organisation’s IT infrastructure from a traditional on-premise solution to a cloud-based solution is becoming more cost-effective.
Businesses today are adapting their IT infrastructure to become more flexible and scalable rather than using the traditional on-premise solution to managing and maintaining their IT infrastructure.
The benefits of cloud infrastructure
Here are some of the benefits businesses can expect to achieve when adopting a cloud infrastructure.
- Efficiency and cost reduction. By taking a cloud-approach, you don’t have to pay for equipment outright, thus reducing your CAPEX (capital expenditure) costs. With this type of approach you typically pay per month for the services you use which includes the IT infrastructure, electricity and minimal downtime as you don’t need a large IT team to manage it in-house for you. Most of these costs fall within your contract.
- Data security. Since your data is stored within a data centre rather than on-premise, you can rest assured the data centre has a set of baseline security measures Travelex Ransomware Attack to keep their client data safe and secure. Implementing these security measures for an on-premise solution is costly, but with a cloud-based approach, it comes as standard. You can also install additional security measures Four Types of Phishing attacks to be aware of at a reasonable cost to secure access to your data, such as multifactor authentication.
- Cloud-based solutions are ideal for businesses of all sizes, especially new start-ups. With their flexible pricing, you can easily scale up or down your IT requirements without the need to buy more hardware equipment as the data centre has capacity.
- The use of smartphones and other mobile devices is part and parcel of most people’s route into accessing corporate data. With cloud-based environments, employees with access rights can access the information and systems they need as long as they have an internet connection. This is far more flexible than an on-premise solution.
- Disaster recovery. Losing data is every business worse nightmare. Using cloud-based solutions within a data centre guarantees that your data is backed up to a certain extent. This also means that as your data is hosted within a cloud environment, it is always available regardless of whether your computer breaks.
- Knowledge is power and giving access to your most valuable information can be detrimental. With cloud-based environments, you can monitor who has access to your environment, restrict access, as well as manage permissions and user roles. This also helps to increase productivity.
Types of cloud infrastructure deployments
There are three main types of cloud infrastructure deployments, and the one you choose depends on your requirements.
- Private cloud. With a private cloud environment, your services are hosted in a data centre that utilises hardware dedicated to you. This means that only you can access the hardware within your environment. This is usually more expensive, but it depends on your requirements and regulatory requirements that apply to your industry.
- Public cloud. Similar to private cloud; however, you share the hardware in that environment with others further reducing your costs. This is safe and secure like private cloud, and while you are sharing the hardware with others, all of your business data is kept separate, safe and secure from other clients.
- Hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment that uses a mix of on-premise, private cloud and third-party, public cloud services with orchestration between the two platforms. This gives businesses greater flexibility that doesn’t want to adopt a fully private cloud or public cloud approach.
Things you need to know before making a decision
Before making any decisions on moving to the cloud, you need to think about the following: –
- What systems you currently use?
- How do most of your employee’s access company data?
- Do any employees work remotely or from the same location?
- How do you manage your current IT infrastructure?
- Do you have an in-house IT team?
- How do you store and backup your data?
- How quickly do you apply patches and updates to your hardware?
Talk to us
To find out more about moving to a cloud environment, or to discuss how to get the most from cloud IT backbone can help. Contact us to discuss your needs.
