Cloud storage enables businesses to exert more control over increasingly complex IT environments. Many IT departments are struggling with the management-related issues and costs stemming from infrastructure expansion. It's a physical problem, in terms of the storage equipment and support needed for big data and application provisioning. It's also an issue of management, as rising device and networking demands put more pressure on IT resourcing and policymaking capacities. At the same time, pressure to keep costs down can leave IT systems fractured or bloated.
Cloud storage is critical to reducing the costs and complications of IT for a better bottom line. Here are three ways it makes a difference:
- Simplifies backup and recovery: Many organizations struggle to get employees to back up files in anything approaching real time. This reality is compounded by growing IT environments, wrote ZDNet senior editor Jason Perlow. Cloud storage offers organizations scalable storage space that expands as a business's needs do, plus automated syncing and backup to ensure real-time recovery availability.
- Reduces CAPEX and OPEX: The cloud can reduce storage-related capital and operating expenses in one fell swoop, observed CSO Online contributor Gordon Makryllos. Cloud storage offers upfront advantages to organizations by drastically reducing the amount of equipment they need to buy. Its scalability also offers OPEX cost benefits through streamlined security management, greater flexibility and more centralized IT support that provides continuity as organizations' priorities change.
- Improves collaborative potential: Communication and collaboration are more critical than ever to establishing a vibrant, successful organization. By centralizing file storage in a cloud server instead of on individual devices, employees can view, edit and share documents and files easily and in real time. IT departments can also leverage cloud environments to provide enhanced encryption and other security measures, automating access and preserving data integrity in the face of cyberthreats.
As complexity and costs rise, cloud storage can help relieve IT departments of many of the daily tasks that take up an increasing amount of their time. It enables them to spend more time on business-critical projects, with this alignment serving as another way to boost margins and take control of changing technological imperatives.