The public’s perception of cloud computing has really evolved over the past few years. Three or four years ago, few people expected that cloud collaboration solutions would be as robust, reliable and secure as on-premises solutions, but that has changed dramatically. At this point, there’s a commonly held understanding that cloud computing is the future.
It’s useful to compare the evolution of cloud computing to the early use of electricity. At first, a manufacturing company or other organization had to build and maintain its own electricity plant. Eventually, this on-premises solution lost favor, and electricity moved out to public utilities. Now, instead of generating your own power, you pay for the service and plug in, improving productivity.
Cloud computing promises a similar transformation. Instead of purchasing and maintaining your own on-premises infrastructure and applications, you plug your computer into a network jack and have everything you need for your business. This rapid evolution is especially attractive to business users and other non-IT employees, as the cloud offers quick deployment and enablement of technology solutions and productivity tools, without waiting to get help from IT.
The cloud still needs to address some security concerns in highly regulated industries, but you could probably expect nearly every organization to begin adopting cloud computing in the next five years, at least for some of their less-critical workloads.
From a productivity standpoint, there are several reasons for businesses to embrace the cloud. Here are a few key reasons:
- The cloud is cost-effective: Cloud computing has changed the conversation from capital expenditures to operational expenditures that are more predictable. For instance, using the Microsoft Azure cloud platform is 70 to 80 percent more cost-efficient than traditional procurement of hardware and software and data centers. The cloud offers a subscription-based model, which offers tremendous cost savings and makes it possible for any organization to use advanced features like video conferencing, screen-sharing and coauthoring.
- The cloud supports agility: Especially in businesses with seasonal peaks, there’s a great advantage to acquiring resources where and when you need them. Cloud computing makes it easy to scale your infrastructure and services up and down, supporting agility from both a cost and operational standpoint.
- The cloud helps you keep pace with innovation: Technology is evolving rapidly in the cloud, driving business innovation. In more traditional software development, a provider might release an upgrade every one to three years. With cloud computing, companies like Microsoft are able to scrap that slow process for constant innovation.Microsoft has adopted a “mobile first, cloud first” focus and proposed a 90-day release cycle that allows it to turn on new features and rapidly deploy new solutions. Microsoft used to deploy product in segments: email, files, collaboration solutions, business intelligence and so on. Now, it is providing updates to those elements in a highly unified platform such as Office 365.
In a broader sense, cloud computing is also changing how people work. By allowing employees to access content and enterprise collaboration solutions from mobile devices, people are able to work and collaborate effectively with anyone from anywhere. By presenting a new way of working, the cloud is transforming organizations and helping people become more efficient and productive regardless of where they’re located.
Learn more about creating a cloud-based collaboration strategy for your organization by contacting Portal Solutions.
