It’s not easy to grow a business. While most midsized business owners welcome the growth, it also comes with new challenges and more work. You have to find ways to scale your process, recruit new talent while retaining who you have now, anticipate new costs, while still serving your customers and not losing sight of the agility and culture that got you to where you are.
What about your IT systems as you grow? Gone are the days where your ability to adapt and scale your IT could hinder growth. The cloud has really changed the game for growing businesses.
The rise of the cloud
It’s not just large enterprises that are making the most of the technological advantages of the cloud. Small and midsized businesses are too. In fact, according to an article in Forbes, cloud computing spending grew 4.5 times faster than the growth in overall IT spending since 2009. And, it’s expected to grow 6 times faster between 2015 and 2020. What does that tell us? That companies, of all sizes, are clearly moving in this direction.
Why are midsized businesses making the move to the cloud?
The cloud has made it incredibly easy to tap into the kinds of powerful, ultra-secure technology that only the biggest businesses used to have. What’s more, this tech is more affordable and easy-to-use than ever before.
Now growing businesses can use it to collaborate more effectively, work with remote talent and accelerate their projects.
1. Reducing costs
Intuit Inc, in their report “QuickBooks Future of Small Business”, says that we’re in the “decade of the small business”. They explain that the rapid growth projections from 30 million small US businesses in 2016 to 42 million by 2026 is partly because of the availability of low-cost and scalable infrastructure. And for most businesses, that means the cloud.
One of the first things many midsized businesses consider when looking to the cloud, is eliminating huge capital expenditures for on-site hardware, and a reduced cost for software licenses. However, the longer-term benefits come from the pay-as-you-go pricing model for cloud solutions. Your IT budget becomes more predictable and forecastable and you benefit from only paying for what you use. These are important things to have when you’re growing.
As an example, Microsoft quotes a Canadian-based company Mabel’s Labels as having reduced their software licensing costs from $21,000 annually to just $7,000 when moving their Office suite to the cloud. From our experience, this is pretty typical for many midsized businesses.
2. Better security
Is the cloud really secure?
If you’ve asked yourself (or your tech team) this question, you’re not alone.
Despite the prevalence of the cloud and cloud-based applications, this seems to be a lingering question for many. Especially today when we see constant news about breaches and large-scale hacks.
“Ambiguity about what cloud computing actually delivers to an organization is compounded by a variety of real and imagined concerns about the security and control implications of different cloud models.”
Jay Heiser, VP Gartner.
Here are a few facts to consider:
- Through 2020, public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) workloads will suffer at least 60% fewer security incidents than those in traditional data centers. Source: Gartner
- By 2018, the 60% of enterprises that implement appropriate cloud visibility and control tools will experience 1/3rd fewer security failures. Source: Gartner
- Global spending on cloud security solutions will reach $3.5 billion by 2021, which represents an annual growth rate of 28% in five years. Source: Forrester
Security is always important to your business at any stage. But, especially when you’re business is growing, you don’t want to experience setbacks because of a laps in security. Not only does it slow down your momentum with resources redirected to identify and fix the problem, but you could suffer the kind of damage to your reputation that you just can’t recover from.
Without big budgets or a team of security specialist, it’s unlikely that your midsized business can deliver a level of security to match that of cloud providers. You can expect full encryption and firewalls, 24/7 monitoring, and automatic patches and upgrades. One of the keywords here is “automatic”. A properly set up cloud infrastructure will make use of automation whenever possible – eliminating a number of risks from one of your biggest threats – human error.
3. Refocus your IT staff
Regardless of the size of your on-site IT team, they are likely overwhelmed and spend a good deal of their time troubleshooting every-day problems.
Is the move to the cloud just going to be another burden on your IT staff?
It shouldn’t be. While there is some coordination involved in making the switch, implementation and deployment should go smoothly and be handled by your cloud solutions provider. The same goes for ongoing maintenance.
Once you move to the cloud, managing patches, updates, or new installations becomes centralized and easier. It gives your IT team a chance to refocus on either solving some of the lingering problems (if they don’t go away when you move to the cloud that is) or focusing on strategic projects that have a positive impact on your bottom line and help you innovate and grow. And in reality, that strategic role is really where on-site IT roles are moving. Could IT be a strategic advantage to your business?
“92% of IT practitioners agree that professionals will need a much stronger strategic vision aligned to the wider business, and will be expected to take a holistic view of the services their organization provides." Source: The Future IT Service Management Professional Report by AXELOS
4. Greater scalability and adaptability
For many growing midsized businesses, the real beauty of moving to the cloud comes from the ability to scale. As you grow, so does your system. The pay-as-you-go model is flexible, and you don’t have to worry about being tied to a single solution for an extended period like you would with hardware contracts.
Something else to consider: because of the clear adoption trends and benefits of the cloud, more and more software is only available in a cloud-based form. By 2019, it’s expected that over 30% of the 100 largest software vendors will have opted for a cloud-only approach.
The cloud gives you the ability to give each employee access to what they need to do their job, with few concerns about different versions on different devices or people working in silos.
5. Easier mobility
More and more employees want to work from anywhere, and expect that flexibility in an employer. Most good employers want to accommodate that, and create a company culture that helps recruit and retain talented people.
But, from a tech perspective, managing multiple laptops and devices can be a nightmare. What software do they have? What level of security is it running? What is the employee accessing from the device? Is everything current and patched? What else is the employee doing on the device?
The cloud changes all of that. Regardless of where they’re working from, your employees can access their data, their apps, and even their entire desktops. Nothing ever “lives” on the devices so a lost or stolen smartphone for example, doesn’t have to be a huge liability.
Don’t just jump in. Plan you cloud journey
While the benefits of the cloud are well established, it pays to think about how you’re going to embrace them. Too often, growing businesses take an ad-hoc approach to technology, buying solutions as needs arise, without really thinking about a broader roadmap.
A more strategic approach means you can identify what you’re missing and plan your way to better collaboration, easier remote working and more efficient processes.
But, from a tech perspective, managing multiple laptops and devices can be a nightmare. What software do they have? What level of security is it running? What is the employee accessing from the device? Is everything current and patched? What else is the employee doing on the device?
If you’re looking for some advice on how to get started, we work with midsized businesses to build custom roadmaps to the cloud. Our free quote is a great place to start and make the most of your cloud-based infrastructure.