If you haven’t yet considered the many ways that cloud computing and cloud-based services can help you run your business more efficiently, now is the time. The cloud isn’t just for running a company either – it can make a hugely positive impact on how you run your digital life too.
The term (or we might say “buzzword”) cloud computing has been around for a while now, and to some degree its a misunderstood concept. What’s most important to remember is that cloud computing works by utilizing the shared resources of a network of computers or servers. This means that, when combined, this “cloud” of machines are faster, more efficient, and much better at data storage – which is probably particularly relevant to anyone who’s ever lost an important document.
Let’s take a look at a few ways cloud services can enhance all of your computing needs.
Coordination Makes Your Work Faster and More Efficient
Cloud services enable you and your team to work together much faster and more efficiently. Do you remember when working on a project with one or more other people meant physically carrying a flash drive from one computer to another? Not only was this inconvenient, it was slow. Furthermore, it was quite difficult to coordinate, because you had to make sure everyone had an updated version of the file that was being worked on.
In the event that your office is still working in this way, you’re way overdue for implementing a cloud solution. The cloud enables everyone to be working on the same project from their own computer – whether that computer is in their office at work or if it’s a laptop on their bed at home.
Data Backup Has Never Been Easier
Data backup is extremely important. If you’ve never lost data, take it from someone who has – it isn’t fun. It’s not just a major hassle for work related files either. Losing potentially years worth of pictures or home videos can be devastating.
Cloud services allow you to know that your files aren’t only stored locally on your computer, but on another server as well. Cloud-enabled file storage is highly redundant, so no matter what happens to your machine, you know that your files are still safely stored in the cloud.
File Storage and Sharing
File storage is superior compared to the old way you used to share files. Have you ever emailed yourself a file? This is totally unnecessary now, because once you store a file in the cloud, it’ll be available across all machines and devices that you work on. Not only does this make saving and backing up your own files much easier, it also allows your employees or team to seamlessly share files among one another.
File storage and sharing in the cloud is also very secure. The only machines that will have access to the files are the ones that you explicitly grant access to – this means that things like your home PC, your laptop, your tablet, or your mobile phone will all have access to the same set of synced files, but nobody else will until you personally decide to share these files.
Your Website and Online Services will be Faster
Cloud computing is much faster than the way things used to be done. By using the shared resources among a network of servers, everything gets faster – and that means if you host your website or other online services within the cloud, your website visitors and clients will have a snappier experience. You know exactly how important speed is if you’ve ever been waiting for a website to load – if it takes too long, you probably ended up going somewhere else. Make the switch to cloud based services so that this never happens to your business.
It’s Easy to Migrate
Finally, it’s important to know that switching over your current working environment to a cloud based environment isn’t complicated at all. Odds are the transition will be fairly seamless, and you’ll continue working as you normally do – except with all of the benefits we’ve looked at today.
Migrating to cloud based services may also allow you to use several of the very useful cloud-only applications that have been developed in recent years. You might find that adding some of these applications to your normal workflow can increase productivity even more, along with the added benefit of being able to share and easily back up your work.
