The Age of Cloud: How Did We Benefit From This Revolutionary Tech Concept
Cloud services have taken the world of business by storm and revolutionized it.
By now, 94% of enterprises already use cloud service, while 30% of all IT budgets are invested in cloud computing.
Statistics of market adoption seem to prove this technology’s importance. Read on to learn and understand better the revolutionary power of cloud computing.
The Age of Cloud – A Brief History
Back in 1999, cloud computing emerged when Salesforce.com made a bold and innovative move by trying to provide its users enterprise-level applications over the internet.
Three years later, Amazon followed the lead, offering its users storage and computational solutions. In 2006, Amazon introduced Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), allowing brands and developers the option to rent a virtual cloud-based machine for storage or data execution purposes.
Cloud storage became a product in 2007 when Dropbox first offered its file hosting service. The cloud industry heated up in 2008, when Google joined the game, launching the Google App.
Since Google had a broad user base, numerous brands transitioned to cloud computing and adopted it as the standard technology for their business operations.
Later, in 2010 and 2011, both Microsoft and IBM joined the contest, offering their cloud solutions.
Since then, cloud solutions have only advanced, and various other services such as business analytics and intelligence tools became accessible to the end-users.
The Age of Cloud – What’s So Revolutionary?
From today’s point of view, cloud technology, as we know it, may not seem that revolutionary anymore.
We’ve grown so accustomed to its benefits, that it’s hard for us to remember the times when our data was tied down to our computers.
Cloud computing enabled our documents to become accessible, wherever we are, no matter the time of the day. The technology is now so widespread that devices like DVDs and USB sticks are becoming obsolete.
Besides data storage, cloud computing offers other resources on demand, too, such as services, computing, and applications.
Cloud is a technology that truly revolutionized business. Cloud made it possible for companies to create new applications and provide their services faster, as well as to figure out what goods and services their customers like and need.
Using cloud-based services gives businesses a competitive advantage. For example, enterprises are now opting for AI-powered multi bot structure to answer different demands from their customers. Even though bots have different “skills” they use cloud-based data to offer the users a highly-personalized customer journey 24/7/365.
The Age of Cloud – The Main Benefits
So what are the benefits cloud computing brought to businesses?
- Cloud Lowers the Cost of Entry. Even small companies can now benefit from business analytics, before available only to larger corporations. The use of AI-powered tools that we mentioned earlier needs a large amount of computing power, and cloud computing grants access to such resources and services for an affordable price. Cloud provides businesses immediate access to hardware resources, with no significant up-front investments.
- Scalability. Cloud computing makes it easier for companies to scale their services according to their current demands – a startup won’t have the same IT needs as a well-established company that hires more than 1,000 employees. With cloud solutions, businesses can quickly scale up or down, as they can increase their cloud capacity without putting extra money into physical infrastructure. This way, the risk of scaling up is minimized, as companies can now have professional services at their disposal with minimal up-front investment.
- Security. Even though some organizations still have security concerns when it comes to transitioning their business to cloud, 94% of companies noticed an improvement in safety, a RapidScale study claims. Companies can now securely store and back up their files and significantly reduce the risk of data loss or theft. Many online file storage solutions offer encryption, to add additional protection to your confidential information.
- Control. Companies need to have control over their sensitive data so that it doesn’t get into the wrong hands. Cloud grants such authority, and the levels of access can be different for different users.
- Mobility. Can you imagine what remote work would look like without cloud solutions? Fortunately, you don’t have to. Any information employees might need, as well as all the documents and applications they use to manage their daily tasks, can now be accessed easily, no matter the location. Employees can continuously stay up to date with their clients and colleagues, using their cell phones or tablets.
- Improved Collaboration. Google Drive, Asana, Basecamp, Slack, Trello – these are only some of the project management tools that make collaboration easier. Such tools make it possible for users to share their information securely and efficiently, offering many other features for better organizing your tasks, increasing engagement and interest of employees.
- Analytics. Specific cloud-computing solutions can give you a valuable insight into large amounts of data related to your business and your customers. Such insight is vital for monitoring and analyzing business processes, as well as making plans to adjust or improve them.
- Disaster Recovery. No matter how much we progressed, we can’t predict and prevent specific scenarios that put businesses in danger. However, for a company, it’s of crucial importance to be able to recover fast, and cloud computing can make it possible.
- Centralized Updates. Cloud computing can require fewer internal IT resources when it comes to updates. This is because the cloud simplifies administration of updates by allowing IT staff to push out updates from a centralized location.
- Sustainability. Cloud solutions promote sustainability as they improve energy efficiency, cut down on paper waste, and develop virtual services instead of more hardware.
If you’re among the early adopters, it may even be hard for you to remember what the business without cloud was like. However, the cloud still has the power to surprise us, as with the rise of AI, big data, and machine learning, its applications can disrupt the world of business once again.
About the author
Michael Deane has been working in marketing for almost a decade and has worked with a huge range of clients, which has made him knowledgeable on many different subjects. He has recently rediscovered a passion for writing and hopes to make it a daily habit. You can read more of Michael’s work at Qeedle.
