The Hidden Value of the Cloud 

You can find a plethora of information online about how to save money with the Cloud. And while that’s all helpful data, it takes a well-planned strategy to determine how to get the best value from a Cloud solution.

The real value of the Cloud may not come from reduced expenditures but from receiving better IT services, security and overall value for your company. When deciding whether to move your organization to the Cloud, it’s best to compare your options in an adequate context and give fair consideration to unseen value the Cloud can offer.

The real value of the Cloud may not come from reduced expenditures but from receiving better IT services, security and overall value for your company. When deciding whether to move your organization to the Cloud, it’s best to compare your options in an adequate context and give fair consideration to unseen value the Cloud can offer.

Labor: Make the Cloud work for you.

Is your IT team busy? Are they on overload, responding to a multitude of requests? Are you having trouble retaining or hiring IT team members? These are common issues found in organizations today. And they’re all issues the Cloud can help solve.

The top labor-saving reasons for moving to the Cloud are:

• Efficiency
• Simplicity of use
• Access
• Overall lower costs

Cloud solutions help lower the day-to-day pressure on IT team members.

Many companies agree it’s getting more and more difficult to find the right in-house IT hires. More than 90% of HR managers have cited issues with hiring people with the right skillset.

How much does it cost your organization to hire a new IT employee? The U.S. Department of Labor has stated the cost of hiring the wrong candidate is 30% of the employee’s salary.

The wrong selection can cost more than just wages – like lost time, training resources and lowered team morale. Cloud services can help fill gaps in your IT team, by dedicating workers to handle your storage, backup or security needs.

Security as a Practice

People get hacked. If you’re on the internet, bots are scanning, and they’ll figure out who you are soon enough. Fifteen years ago no one had to think about security, but in the last five years, security has become the center of everyone’s attention.

Security is an additional cost, and one well worth your attention. The Cloud can give you an effective security solution for today’s risks.

Stopping a security threat is not appetizing; it’s a slow, ugly grind. The National Institute of Standards in Technology guidelines could be considered the most boring list you’ve ever seen. Patch management, staying compliant, conducting hardware and software inventory – it’s all important and vital to an organization, but it’s not fun to maintain. That’s the kind of thing you want to outsource to the Cloud and let machines and other people do for you.

Breaches by Industry:

As of September 2017, the Identity Theft Resource Center has reported 1,002 total breaches for the year.

• Banking/Finance: 6.4%
• Business: 52.6%
• Education: 9.8%
• Gov’t/Military: 4.9%
• Healthcare: 26.3%12

A good firewall is something you didn’t have to worry about several years back, but it’s essential now. The Cloud can offer some great security solutions, especially when you consider:

• Every day: 5,262,277 records are lost or stolen
• Every hour: 219,262 records are lost or stolen
• Every minute: 3,654 records are lost or stolen
• Every second: 61 records are lost or stolen

The average data breach now costs $4 million, according to a study from January 2015 to March 2017 by IBM and the Ponemon Institute.

The cost per lost record is $158.

For Healthcare, that number is $355.

If your company has a team ready to combat a data breach, you can lower that average cost to $16 per record.

Backup: What’s the Cheaper Solution Really Saving You?

Although it may be less expensive, backing up your data on tape is not an ideal platform for disaster recovery. Cloud backup solutions can get you that much closer to having a Disaster Recovery and a Business Continuity solution in place. Instead of putting physical tape in a vault, you’re putting your data on a virtual server. If your building burns down, your team needs only to get to the internet for their data – that could be at home, the library or even the coffee shop. The Cloud can be more expensive, but the value is so much more.

Tape: 

• Restores Slowly
• Unreliable (Is Anyone Checking for Blank Tapes?)
• Hard to Operate

Cloud:

• Recovery Time and Recovery Point Options to Fit Your Business’ Needs
• Rest Assured Your Data is Safe
• IT Experts Ready to Help You Restore
• Breaking Down Disaster Recovery

Disaster Recovery is often used as an umbrella term. But you can really break DR into two objectives:

• Disaster Recovery – Being able to replicate a copy of your data after a flood or fire, whether a single email or an entire server. Disaster recovery saves data.
• Business Continuity – Your plan for getting your organization up and running after a disaster, after your business is gone. What has to happen so you can open your doors?

Your monthly payment for cloud-hosted IT can put you well on your way to developing both a Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plan in your business. You’re getting a lot more than just the upfront services.

Storage: The Heartbeat of Every Company.

Storage is at the core of every organization. All those emails, invoices, pictures, videos and spreadsheets need to be stored somewhere, and they need to be safe.

With Cloud storage, your month-over-month spending could be less than keeping storage internally on your own servers. When you’re considering Cloud storage options, compare your quoted monthly payment to what it costs your company to acquire, maintain, upgrade, fix, power and cool your internal storage options. Cloud can offer cost-saving advantages in many areas, especially when the solution comes with backup management, disaster recovery, security, functionality, increased speed and uptime.

Email is often the first, easiest jumping-off point to the Cloud. Office 365 is a rock-solid example of the value of the Cloud. When email is moved to the Cloud, organizations can see 2 or 3 TB of storage move with it. This can free up a lot of space, and may even eliminate the need to buy more storage.

For a monthly fee, you have your storage, backup and security covered.

Hidden cost savings can be found all over the Cloud. Is it time to learn more?