For enterprises operating in competitive markets, cloud hosting is a solution that can give companies a number of important advantages over their rivals. Putting the latest technologies affordably within their grasp, it offers the opportunity to innovate at speed and react swiftly to market changes, all without the burden of purchasing expensive hardware and operating an on-site datacentre. Here, we’ll explain how a cloud hosting solution can help an enterprise outperform its competitors.

1. Reduce cap-ex and operating expenses

Today’s digitally transformative companies have significant IT requirements. Big data analytics, automated operations, websites, communications systems and all the other applications they may run require an infrastructure that is high volume, high-performance and high spec. Creating such a system in-house also makes it high priced. Add to this the cost of IT staff, backup servers, the replacement of obsolete hardware, power and premises and the burden on company finances is substantial.

Cloud hosting offers companies facing these challenges a completely different alternative; one where there is no need for capital expenditure on hardware, nor many of the associated overheads. This is because the hardware and services your company needs to run all its modern applications are provided by your hosting vendor. They provide, manage and maintain the high spec hardware, ensuring that it stays available and is defended against hacking and malware while assisting you with 24/7 expert technical support. And all of this is charged for on a pay-per-use basis, helping you keep costs as low as possible.  

2. Infinite scalability in an instant

How well a company benefits from changes in the marketplace or to newly gleaned insights from data often depends upon how quickly it can react in comparison to its competitors. Key to doing this is the ability to scale up computing resources, such as for the analysis of big data or coping with spikes in website traffic.  

For businesses operating in-house data centres, scaling up can be both slow and expensive. It may, for example, require the purchase and installation of a new server which could take days to achieve and leave the business lagging behind its rivals. Company’s using cloud hosting, on the other hand, can scale up instantly, as and when demand is required, giving them all the resources they require.

What’s more, scaling down is as easy as scaling up, so that companies only pay for the resources they need when they use them. Not only is this a more efficient way to operate, it means companies aren’t paying out for expensive hardware that they’ll only use intermittently.

3. Swift app deployment

While scaling up quickly can be beneficial, so can the swift deployment of critical apps. With many modern applications designed for instantaneous deployment in the cloud, it means companies can have access to technologies, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, immediately upon sign-up – a fraction of the time it would take in-house. This can be especially beneficial for smaller enterprises as it provides the same deployment speeds as those enjoyed by organisations with advanced on-site infrastructures.

4. 100% uptime

Downtime caused by critical applications going offline can cause significant disruption and have major financial and reputational impacts. Companies with in-house infrastructures can also find it a difficult and time-consuming process to get the applications back online.

For those whose applications are hosted in the cloud, this is a situation which cannot happen. As applications are hosted on virtual machines, should a physical server issue occur, the host simply moves the virtual server to an alternative physical machine or, in cases of natural disasters, to remote data centres. The provider’s hyper-converged, multi-data centre infrastructure protects enterprises against everything from hard disk issues to entire datacentre failures, guaranteeing 100% uptime for critical applications.

5. No more legacy technology

Companies that host their applications in-house are faced with the dilemma of regularly upgrading to the latest hardware or to using outdated technologies. One option is expensive and disruptive while the other leaves the company in a weaker competitive position with increasing risk of hardware issues. 

Customers of cloud service providers are not faced with this dilemma as the vendor will, out of its own competitive necessity, regularly update the infrastructure in its data centres. The benefit for cloud customers is that their applications will always be hosted on the latest, high-performance servers. Indeed, the servers will provide optimised performance using powerful processors, lightning-fast SSD drives and load balancing.

6. Enhanced security

While some enterprises have concerns regarding public cloud security, what shouldn’t be overlooked is that cloud providers often have far superior security to in-house data centres. Cloud providers have to comply with strict security regulations to ensure they safeguard customers’ data. They will deploy the latest protection against hacking, malware and internal data theft, using next-gen firewalls, intrusion prevention and in-flow malware protection. As a result, threats will be detected and isolated well before they are able to reach a client’s server. They also provide a suite of other security measures, including, data encryption, email authentication, remote backups and VPNs.

7. Remote working opportunities

When applications are hosted in a cloud environment, it means a company’s employees can access them from anywhere with an internet connection, something that has helped many organisations benefit from remote working. It helps companies adapt to situations like the coronavirus lockdown with far less disruption, while also enabling collaborative teams from around the world to be put together. Flexible and remote working also enables companies to reduce the amount of office space needed, helping to make even more savings.

8. Advanced technologies at the push of a button

Technologies such as AI, machine learning, IoT and big data analytics are at the heart of digital transformation and those company’s which embrace them are able to make the biggest gains over their competitors. With cloud hosting, the rapid deployment of these technologies gives companies the ability to benefit from personalised marketing and communications, improved customer services, market and operational insights, and much more.

Conclusion 

Enterprises that migrate to the cloud put themselves in a better position to take advantage of today’s transformative technologies, helping them to become more agile innovators in the marketplace. What’s more, by opting for the cloud, they can operate in a way that reduces expenses, increases flexibility and reliability and provides enhanced security. As a result, they can be far more competitive players in their field.  

For more information about our managed IT solutions, visit hyperslice.com