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What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing are services delivered from third-party companies in the Internet on pay-as-you-go schemes. Hence, in the past people would run applications on their local devices, cloud computing provides the ability to run applications or services on a remote location.

Some of the benefits of cloud computing 

• Flexibility: When a company needs more resources, cloud provides the ability to get these resources with a “click of a button” and without any significant costs since there is no need for additional hardware or licenses.

• Disaster recovery: Using cloud computing, there is no need to have complex business continuity plans and disaster recovery sites. Due to the size of cloud computing providers, they have all the disaster recovery and business continuity plans so they make sure that in case of a disaster, your business will be “on-production” on a 24/7 basis.

• Updates and upgrades: All of us know that updating or upgrading our servers is a very time consuming process and also it is not a trouble-free task. Using cloud computing, you do not need to worry for the new updates or even the upgrades of versions of the software you are using since all the testing and implementation of these tasks are carried out by the cloud provider without any additional cost.

• Pay what you use: One of the most important benefits of cloud computing is that you pay for what you use. There is no need for initial costs since within a few minutes or hours a company can purchase and start using the necessary services from the cloud. On this case, you do not need to purchase and maintain large IT systems in-house in order to be able to expand. If you need more, you buy more services “on-the-fly”.

• Document control: When a company uses the cloud for file storage, there is no need to send emails to each other to review documents, spreadsheet, etc. You just locate the specific file in the cloud, do the changes you need and save it. Automatically, a new version is created in case you need to use the version without your changes and also any person in the company can access it to add his/her comments.

• Collaboration: Using cloud computing, your organization is able to collaborate using instant messenger, video conferencing, teleconferencing and also online meetings. For example, people from different locations can have an online meeting with a power point presentation.

• Work from anywhere: With the cloud computing, there is no need to be at the office to work. Your laptop, mobile device, tablet or your home PC can become your office. Since all your data is located on a central location (in the cloud), you can access them from anywhere. Do changes on a spreadsheet while you are in the bus and drop an email to your colleague at the office to review it, or accept your office telephone calls on your laptop or smartphone.

• More secure: Even though many companies do not trust the cloud, security is much higher in the cloud than on equipment that is located at your office. This is a fact since cloud-computing providers have specialized personnel that their job is only to safeguard their clients data. Is it more safe to have an IT person that is not specialized to IT security to manage your in-house systems or is it more secure to have 10-15 IT security specialist that the only thing they are doing is to make sure that the cloud environment is secure?

• Competitiveness: Using the cloud, small and medium size businesses are able to have functionality of large organizations at a fraction of cost. Instead of installing and maintain IT systems in-house, you can have the same or even more functionality with a small monthly fee.

• Reducing running expenses: Did you check how much you pay per month or year for your servers or server? Very roughly, for a small tower server you spend approximately 750 Euros per year on running expenses such as power, air-conditioning, antivirus software, backup, hardware failures and maintenance. If you have several servers at your company, do the math.