5 Ways Cloud IT Services Can Boost Your Business

Many businesses are ditching some or all of their on-premises systems in favor of the cloud. A significant share of those organizations are small to midsized businesses (SMBs).

Why are SMBs moving to the cloud? The main attraction for many firms is cost savings: reduced upfront costs for applications or server capabilities and lower total cost of ownership compared to an on-premises application or server hardware.

But did you know the cloud can do more than cut your costs? Investing in cloud IT services can help you grow and improve your business, in the following ways:

1. Improves employee productivity
   Cloud IT services make your workforce more productive by enabling team members to collaborate, communicate, and share data on multiple devices anytime, anywhere. Research bears out the cloud’s productivity-enhancing effects: A 2014 KPMG survey names increased employee productivity as one of the top cloud benefits, reported by 54% of surveyed executives.
2. Reduces IT downtime
   Downtime of your on-premises servers and applications costs your business money. Reputable cloud services provide “always up” reliability, which helps businesses to avoid revenue and business opportunity losses caused by computer system downtime. For example, Office 365, Microsoft’s cloud-based application suite, boasts a verified record of 99.9% uptime.
3. Levels the playing field
   The cloud’s scalability allows smaller businesses to provide levels of service and support that are on a par with larger firms. With the cloud, SMBs’ IT resources are essentially unlimited, supporting them in larger markets service that would otherwise be impossible.
4. Makes your business more responsive and agile
   The cloud can give your business new tools for communicating with customers. The previously mentioned KPMG survey found that 37% of executives use the cloud to improve their interaction and better align with their customers, suppliers, and business partners.
5. Opens new opportunities
   The cloud can help your company capitalize on new business opportunities. Of the executive participants in a 2014 Oxford Economics survey, 71% said that the cloud improves time to production for a new product or service, while 40% said the cloud enables them to expand into new geographic markets.

Whether your business is already in the cloud, or you’re evaluating a move to the cloud, you can expect to gain ample cost-savings and business-growth benefits from cloud technology.

[cta]Got questions about cloud IT business services? Affinity Network Solutions has answers! Learn more — contact us by email or call us at (888) 682-8999.[/cta]