The right cloud facilities can kickstart your digital transformation
With a strategic choice of cloud based services, not only can you transform your business processes, but you can add resilience
We’ve all heard of the cloud, but do you really understand what it can be used for and how it can streamline your business operations?
Cloud Applications
In the past, software would be installed either on each pc or, on a server that each pc would then connect to via the internal network.
The wider availability of cloud platforms however has seen a shift in software application deployment and adoption. More and more industry strength applications are also available as cloud versions. This means you have no installation of software to consider, no patching or updates to manage, and – perhaps the biggest pay-off comes from the fact that these applications are available from anywhere on the planet, as long as you have an internet connection.
Cloud Collaboration
Another area where the cloud has added a new dimension to business processes, is the area of collaboration, sharing and teamwork.
Traditionally, files used to be shared via email, or via a shared network drive etc. Communication would usually take place via email and meetings etc would be helf either by conference call or face to face
The maturing of cloud platforms and technologies now means that via platforms such as (say) Microsoft Teams, users can collaborate across multiple companies, multiple timezones and multiple projects seemlessly and securely. Meetings can take place virtually and realtime, files and resources can be shared in the cloud securely and updates will cascade automatically out to all participants.
Cloud Backups
The cloud also enables your company to to take advantage of scalable storage on demand, to carry out such underpinning processes such as backing up data and archiving, without having to invest in dedicated in-house hardware.
Cloud Computing
The Cloud can also be used as a computing platform – by this we mean that the cloud can used as a powerful server platform enabling you to perform large scale data analytics and data warehousing.
In addition, you can reduce software installation and ownership costs by using virtualisation (hosted on your cloud platform) to provide each desktop with a virtual machine environment. In plain terms, this means your low powered, low cost desktop machines, can log onto your cloud server, which will then give each machine a virtual desktop environment complete with all the usual apps. But the apps and desktop are actually running on a server in the cloud. This means that you can centrally configure desktops and apps and the config changes and access controls will be automatically propagated out to each user when he or she logs on.