4. Seven reasons to move to the cloud

Virtualisation has introduced a degree of flexibility for in-house data centers, reducing the number of physical devices. It is still difficult to maximize efficiency – there is always too little or too much capacity available. The balancing act between required capacity and predicted need results in unnecessary investments and wasted opportunities.

Flexibility is also an element when it comes to the large array of services that can be tuned to the specific needs of your business. As these needs could change or evolve, it is easy to have a solution that allows you to adopt new services within minutes.

This flexibility then allows you to remove complicated infrastructure management that adds little business value. IT experts can concentrate on their core business.

The cloud enables a culture of experimentation. You can use the cloud to test the functionality of a new service without major investment.

If the service proves functional, its use can be immediately scaled up. If the desired end result is not achieved, you can simply shut down the cloud service and get rid of the running cost. This allows for bolder experimentation without great financial risk and upfront investment.

It is difficult to say if the cloud is less expensive than on-premise infrastructure – there are several dimensions to take into account – but in either case there are some interesting financial elements.

By using the cloud, you reduce recurring IT costs. You no longer need to maintain your existing IT infrastructure and have the human capacity to do so.

Secondly, pricing is simplified, which is a saving in itself. You only pay for the capacity you use and often have a choice between different packages. It is important not to forget that prices for pay-as-you-go services were slashed by 30-85% and sustained-use discounts for steady-state workloads were introduced.

Thirdly, there is an interesting ‘balance sheet’ component. For many businesses, infrastructure modernization is the foundation for digital transformation.

Cloud hereby helps companies to have a lower upfront or capital expenditure because they don’t need to purchase their own data center equipment or maintain their IT infrastructure. The decrease in CapEx (investments made for long-term benefits in the future) comes with an increase of OpEx (ongoing costs related to day-to-day operations). These CapEx savings are mostly appreciated by your CFO and his staff.

When you need to have your own infrastructure, you will first have to build it. Which takes time. When you use the cloud, you can be global in minutes. As time-to-market becomes more and more crucial, this is key for a lot of businesses. The cloud is also always available, another important advantage.

The cloud allows you to be up-to-date all the time without any investment from you. And it offers you an extensive set of powerful tools and libraries that facilitate tasks of resource creation and management on cloud environments, in an agile way.

You not only have the support of your cloud provider on being up-to-date, there is also their helpdesk if you have specific problems. Which means less investment in your own IT team or helpdesk or allowing them to focus on their core activities.

Last but maybe foremost: the cloud provides you with multiple levels of security. The subject is on many people’s minds, as we constantly hear about large corporations being hacked.

In the cloud, the best practice for security is called a ‘shared responsibility security model.’
The cloud provider is responsible for the physical infrastructure, while businesses are responsible for access. This means you still have a responsibility, but it will – without any doubt – be easier to handle. It allows you to outsource many critical tasks to a provider, who has dedicated resources.