How the Cloud will affect Your Business?
After the success garnered during the dotcom boom, the World Wide Web became the center of attention for businesses and industries worldwide. Fast-forwarding to the present, we are now experiencing the dotcloud revolution—the IT/Cloud/A.I. the conglomerate that has transformed the business world, and is a high-investment and profitable global business which (aside from the benefits it is already bringing to businesses and their customers) is expected to grow even more in the coming years.
Anybody who has heard of the Cloud knows that it enables users to store large amounts of data on online services hosted by providers either for free or at a fee (charged incrementally depending on the volume of data you need to store). This eliminates the danger of computer crashes or power failures which may erase your data accidentally and has the added advantage of advanced cyber security measures to protect what you migrate to the Cloud. Through the many Infrastructure/Software as a Service (IaaS and SaaS) providers available on the market, companies can rely on the professional expertise of cyber security experts that will prevent any danger of hacking for reasons of industrial espionage (or other reasons).
In conjunction with A.I./IT applications, which are now integrated into Cloud Technology through the Internet of Things, the main advantages for businesses are as follows:
1) It reduces cost by doing away with external hard drives (which would increase naturally as the business grows and more memory storage is needed over time),
2) it increases productivity, reduces bureaucracy, and reduces delivery time of products or services to customers.
3) it provides access all employee departments, managerial levels, and CEOs to company Cloud data in real-time, which they can use and employ for business solutions
4) thus, increasing collaboration and the exchange of ideas from diverse departments, including
5) introducing a cross-disciplinary and diverse approach to business strategy thanks to the data collected and filtered through A.I. machine learning and text mining—data that is gathered from the most diverse sources and areas of human activity found across the entire world wide web.
This access to filtered data means various fields of knowledge can be accessed and introduce the company to new audiences and business opportunities. It especially helps small business gain a greater competitive edge, a jump-start in the market vis a vis bigger competitors,—and AI helps in predicting fluctuations in customer satisfaction/demand as well as anticipating future trends so the company can respond appropriately with the right business solutions. It thus accelerates decision-making, and also allows more access to the market and with no barriers of entry thanks to as-a-service companies that can cut through all the red tape because they have already established the necessary legal regulations that are needed to conduct business globally.
The Cloud also offers unparalleled mobility which allows every employee or CEO to have a ‘mobile office’ and conduct all their tasks through their smartphone or other multimedia device. This will eventually eliminate the need for ‘office space,’ which means cutting off even the cost of rent from the equation. Imagine how much a business can save by having real-time telecommuting from anywhere around the world (as is already the case with many companies including small businesses that have already benefitted from this advantage).
There are either (or both as in the case of Microsoft’s Azure platform) Public Cloud or Private Cloud providers. The first provides an external online server for storage/back-up of data (also in case of internal crashes of power shutdowns), security with data encryption, and other services including maintenance, upgrades and repair for businesses who want to ‘migrate’ their data fully or only partially from their internal data center to the Cloud; while the second installs the Cloud applications and/or software directly on-site into the client company’s IT/Cloud system.
The prices, of course, vary depending on the service, but if you opt for a private cloud service to install the Cloud applications or server then be aware that you will need a team of professional Cloud computing experts to help you maintain and manage not only the cloud system and its applications but also the many upgrades needed over time as the technology progresses. In this case, it is a good idea to resort to the services of professional cloud computing training programs offered by certified academies that also keep you updated on the modern technologies, which continue to evolve. One of these is CloudAcademy, which offers training on Amazon AWS services and other important platforms.
The major Cloud technology players in the market currently are Amazon (AWS- Amazon Web Services), which has an audience of one million users in over 190 countries and is so popular mainly thanks to the variety of Cloud services and the high processing/CPU computing capacity; Microsoft, which thanks to its Azure Hybrid Platform can handle tasks both on the cloud server and also on the company’s data center (in this case offering both Public and Private Cloud services, explained in the following paragraph); followed by Oracle, SAP, Apple and IBM (with Google expected to rise in the ranks in the near future thanks to its user-friendly and broadly user-based applications and services, which companies can use to their advantage much like Google itself operates and relies fully on its own technologies).
Author Bio
This guest post was written by Hanna Johnson has been a freelance writer for over two years. She loves travelling, and the world of marketing and technology. She currently lives in Rome, Italy and is looking to further develop her career in writing and content marketing.
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