Yes that’s right, the world of computing has changed. Gone are the days where every company had to rely on expensive servers (with their associated high running costs). 

"The cloud offers a platform for companies to work and store their data on. The massive adoption levels evidence just how effective it can be for business." - Solid Start Property Inspections

As well as individual companies hosting applications and data in the cloud, your software suppliers are all moving to a Software as a Service (SaaS) model. This has moved the costs to being Operational Expenditure (OpEx) as opposed to a Capital Expenditure (CapEx).

The benefits of the cloud

The reason that so many are adopting the cloud is because it offers many benefits. For example, having a software-based foundation instantly instils better security. From an infrastructure perspective, hosting providers spend incredible amounts of time, money and effort on ensuring they have the highest levels of security. As the guardians of information, it is down to them to keep it safe. An easy way to think about this is that Google are going to have better security protocols than your business could ever wish for or afford.

Additionally, SaaS and hosting companies invest incredible amounts on their architecture to ensure the resilience and speed of the service. In addition being SaaS means providers can ensure you are on the most recent version of software which massively increases the ability of providers to roll out security and software patches. Doing all this centrally reduces the costs of hardware and system maintenance costs.

Service providers do a very good job of ensuring that their services are at peak performance. To get the best form this, and maximise user experience and subsequent performance, hardware and network connectivity are essential to get right.

Hardware

Slow and dated machines can cost 30 minutes of staff time a day, this equates to 15 days a year. As a business owner you can really see the impact of this when multiplying by the wage bill! In addition to this, slow machines really annoy your workers during stressful periods.  

More info: Managed Switch Service