Competitive performance is critical for any business and keeping costs under control is an important step in achieving healthy business operations.
The adoption of the correct technology has the potential to dramatically reduce the time spent on laborious tasks, limit human error, and ensure projects are delivered successfully.
Done correctly, your business will therefore be better prepared to operate more efficiently, reduce costs, and improve communication with clients and employees.
A cloud-first strategy encourages businesses to look to cloud solutions when developing new processes or adapting old ones, before considering costly on-premise options.
But an effective cloud-first strategy is not cloud-at-all-costs. To generate genuine business value – from greater operational efficiency to increased revenue – advisers should take a pragmatic approach and carefully consider all the options available.
Cloud solutions allow users to seamlessly access applications remotely from various devices, but the user experience depends on the cloud application and network performance.
Businesses that embrace the cloud typically use software-as-a-service (SAAS) – cloud-based applications accessed through the web or an API for integration – eliminating the need to host the application within your own environment.
Effective SAAS syncs with the business objectives and meets security, business continuity and disaster recovery requirements.
If your business applications are unavailable as Saas, you can use the public cloud via providers like AWS or Microsoft Azure, reducing resource overheads.
They offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS), a form of cloud hosting that delivers fundamental computing power on-demand, securely over the internet with flexible contracts.
Software can be delivered to a business in one of two ways: software created from scratch as a SAAS application and software that is generated for on-premise environments.
The second option can be moved to IAAS, but with two key disadvantages: there is less opportunity to reduce cost and it offers less effective integration with cloud-based security.
The time-consuming and expensive process of establishing on-premise physical hardware should be a last resort for any business – a traditional approach that exposes businesses to higher costs.
For business leaders it is crucial to examine the entire savings spectrum of the cloud when planning a migration.
SAAS applications have the advantage of scaling up or down resources according to their requirements – flexibility that is not available with a traditional on-premise model.
Consequently, you will not need to buy another server or software to scale up resources. Typically, your SAAS provider will implement the capacity planning and scaling, as well as all the integrations.
Cyber attacks are costly
The exponential growth of cyber crime means the question facing businesses is not if a cyber attack will happen, but when.
Amid the ever-growing frequency, sophistication and impact of this nefarious activity, businesses cannot cross their fingers and hope they are not targeted.
Instead, senior executives and the board must ask themselves: how can we shield from this very real threat and prevent reputational damage?
