Reasons Small Businesses Should Be Moving to the Cloud

When starting a new business, or restructuring an existing one, access is one of the biggest factors of success. And with the constantly changing landscape of technology, business owners are able to access any aspects of their businesses, over nearly any sort of device. Ari Rabban, the CEO of Phone.com, believes that cloud services are the future of small businesses, with the ability to access anything at any time.

Traditionally cloud computing has been perceived as a great leveller in business. The cloud has allowed small and medium businesses to compete on a more level playing field with their enterprise rivals by removing the need for upfront capital investments that had previously proved prohibitive for smaller businesses. Larger corporations have struggled to trust the cloud computing model, especially when it comes to migrating mission-critical applications, however this attitude is beginning to change.

Here are 10 tips on why you should move to the cloud:

1. Achieve economies of scale – increase volume output or productivity with fewer people. Your cost per unit, project or product plummets.
2. Reduce spending on technology infrastructure. Maintain easy access to your information with minimal upfront spending. Pay as you go (weekly, quarterly or yearly), based on demand.
3. Globalize your workforce on the cheap. People worldwide can access the cloud, provided they have an Internet connection.
4. Streamline processes. Get more work done in less time with less people.
5. Reduce capital costs. There’s no need to spend big money on hardware, software or licensing fees.
6. Improve accessibility. You have access anytime, anywhere, making your life so much easier!
7. Monitor projects more effectively. Stay within budget and ahead of completion cycle times.
8. Less personnel training is needed. It takes fewer people to do more work on a cloud, with a minimal learning curve on hardware and software issues.
9. Critical software is moving to the cloud. Adobe's Creative Cloud and Microsoft's Office 365 are evidence of two large scale software applications that have independently embraced the cloud.
10. Improve flexibility. You can change direction without serious “people” or “financial” issues at stake.

For the cloud industry to truly mature, cloud service providers must take on tough enterprise use cases rather than rebranding the migration of equipment. Service providers must recognise the increased knowledge that the enterprises now have and deliver powerful cloud offerings accordingly.

Fears still abound among CIOs and CTOs regarding the benefits that the cloud can bring to the enterprise, but with software and service providers showing the muscle of the cloud, the technology now provides a radical alternative to traditional IT across the enterprise. The days of the cloud being used as an IT starter kit are over, the enterprise is beginning to unlock the latent potential that lies within.