Cloud integration possibilities for businesses

Cloud technology becomes more and more popular today. Being a prominent business tool it provides companies with great new opportunities. They consider various possibilities of business cloud storage, such as simple sharing their data and creating backups, or even launching cloud-connected applications and operating CRM and other systems.

What exactly makes companies think about cloud technology integration

There are a number of advantages in cloud computing which can be generalized into three main reasons for its integration into business processes:

1. Main responsibilities of IT-experts will undergo a shift in their quality and will focus mostly on IT-innovations instead of IT-maintenance.
2. The costs of any computer systems usage will be reduced. No more need to buy, install and maintain huge servers departments with plenty of other equipment in-house.
3. Much shorter time for service delivery will be needed. No more waste of time for setting up or waiting for an access to be given.

What does that mean in practice? In times of permanent economic fluctuations, all the companies prefer saving money in different ways. With cloud computing, they don’t need to maintain complex in-house infrastructure. Such things as servers and their maintenance, hardware & software, licenses and others numerous things stay in past for them. And if we take it all together – lower costs, higher efficiency and quicker pace of work, – we can see the obvious positive effect on companies’ productivity.

The main statement can sound like this: instead of paying for maintenance and implementation of the infrastructure the cloud integration will let companies pay for innovations.

What makes companies afraid of cloud technology

When it comes to cloud issues, in particular, cloud storage solutions, people somehow tend to think that using it is less secure than using their own IT-departments. In reality, the situation is the opposite one. Probably the wrong impression goes from the principle of basic operation processes. Usually, companies spend a great part of the budget on IT-security and take numerous actions to keep their information safe. Whereas when they use cloud computing they do nothing, so information seems to be unprotected. But, on the contrary, security processes are much more effective in cloud computing. In this case, security is being assured in a more streamlined way. Moreover, large cloud providers usually operate on quite complex levels so they also have to assure complex-level security, which protects information much better than any local IT-security.

Let us see the main security advantages of cloud storage for business:

• Internal data is saved better due to exposure reduction. Statistics proves that nearly one third part of all the IT-employees neglect passwords and get access to confidential data.
• Cloud providers invest great budgets in the further development of cloud security systems.
• Solutions of any technical problems arising are usually found much faster.
• Clients’ security systems can be controlled up to the demands.

Nevertheless, no one can trust cloud technology blindly as there are some disadvantages too. And they are as follows:

• Companies have to trust security model elaborated by some other people.
• Physical control of the data is lost.
• Log-in problems are possible.
• Information becomes highly attractive for hackers.
• Encryption may be needed to use cloud services.

Today cloud security is one of the major concerns and as far as it will be possible to proclaim enough security level it will be another great step towards cloud computing.

Cloud technology here and now

To cut the long story short, let’s see how companies already can benefit from cloud computing and what should be done for safe and reliable integration of business processes and cloud technologies.

1. Remember that cloud computing systems are being constantly developed, so one should constantly stay informed.
2. All the reasons to move to the cloud systems consist in the efficient use of companies’ resources. So, actually, all that will be changed is a business operation tool. Great changes for a business as a kind of activity should not be expected.
3. It is not necessary to use only cloud or only classic computing. One can already start using cloud storage, but in a selective way. Thus, one can use a cloud to store some general information, leaving more important data at the company’s IT-department.
4. Still, some really important data should not be based on the cloud despite any financial benefits. At least until complete security is implemented and regulation laws are introduced.
5. Keep in mind that in the long run cloud computing will reduce volumes of work, but to introduce it, lots of time will be spent to find the most appropriate model of cloud functioning for each particular business case.

There are already lots of companies who have partially or fully implemented cloud computing in their operation and they already outpace their competitors in productivity and profits. Thus, in times of mobility and virtualization cloud computing becomes not simply the alternative but the necessity to stay among the leaders. Where it will take us to – who knows? The more effective businesses are the more they can do. What they will become with such opportunities can be hardly predicted now. But we will see it really soon as cloud integration comes closer and closer.