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adding value and profit
cloud computing provides more value to your customers and yields better profit
Cloud computing and recurring revenue should be seen as a great thing for the IT channel. It offers a way of delivering better services: faster, cheaper and more profitable, plus expanding your service offerings.
Cloud computing offers end-users enormous benefits in terms of functionality and mobility but, above all, in cost reductions. To the channel, reducing cost infers that a reduction in profit will not be far behind. This, however, could not be further from the truth. What is happening in the industry is that partners are able to deliver a lower cost offerings to end-users compated to their competitors, but also make much more margin as the cost of goods sold is much lower. More profit means a healthier business and also one that can take on more customers without needing to invest in equipment or people.
Here is an example of a simple 10-user organization, which would require desktops, applications (MS Office), a file server and small phone system. This example looks at a year's costs, inclusive of support, licensing etc.
Cheaper cost to customer, more profit made.
Why do businesses buy cloud services?
Removal / reduction of capital expenditure
Customers can avoid spending large amounts of capital on purchasing and installing their IT infrastructure or applications by moving to the cloud model. Capital expenditure on IT reduces available working capital for other critical operations and business investments. Cloud computing offers a simple operational expense that is easier to budget for month-by-month, and prevents money being wasted on depreciating assets. Additionally, customers do not need to pay for excess resource capacity in-house to meet fluctuating demand.
Reduced administration costs
IT solutions can be deployed extremely quickly and managed, maintained, patched and upgraded remotely by your service provider. Technical support is provided round the clock by reputable providers like ThinkGrid for no extra charge, reducing the burden on IT staff. This means that they are free to focus on business-critical tasks, and businesses can avoid incurring additional manpower and training costs. IT giant IBM has pointed out that cloud computing allows organizations to streamline procurement processes, and eliminates the need to duplicate certain computer administrative skills related to setup, configuration, and support.
Improved resource utilization
Combining resources into large clouds reduces costs and maximizes utilization by delivering resources only when they are needed. Businesses needn’t worry about over-provisioning for a service whose use does not meet their predictions, or under-provisioning for one that becomes unexpectedly popular. Moving more and more applications, infrastructure, and even support into the cloud can free up precious time, effort and budgets to concentrate on the real job of exploiting technology to improve the mission of the company. It really comes down to making better use of your time - focusing on your business and allowing cloud providers to manage the resources to get you to where you need to go. Sharing computing power among multiple tenants can improve utilization rates, as servers are not left idle, which can reduce costs significantly while increasing the speed of application development. A side effect of this approach is that computer capacity rises dramatically, as customers do not have to engineer for peak loads.
Scalability on demand
Scalability and flexibility are highly valuable advantages offered by cloud computing, allowing customers to react quickly to changing IT needs, adding or subtracting capacity and users as and when required and responding to real rather than projected requirements. Even better, because cloud-computing follows a utility model in which service costs are based on actual consumption, you only pay for what you use. Customers benefit from greater elasticity of resources, without paying a premium for large scale.
Quick and easy implementation
Without the need to purchase hardware, software licences or implementation services, a company can get its cloud computing arrangement off the ground in minutes.
Helps smaller businesses compete
Historically, there has been a huge disparity between the IT resources available to small businesses and to enterprises. Cloud computing has made it possible for smaller companies to compete on an even playing field with much bigger competitors. ‘Renting’ IT services instead of investing in hardware and software makes them much more affordable, and means that capital can instead be used for other vital projects. Providers like ThinkGrid take enterprise technology and offer services that would otherwise cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to SMBs for a low monthly fee.
Quality of service
Your selected vendor should offer 24/7 customer support and an immediate response to emergency situations.
Guaranteed uptime, SLAs.
Always ask a prospective provider about reliability and guaranteed service levels - ensure your applications and/or services are always online and accessible.
Anywhere Access
Cloud-based IT services let you access your applications and data securely from any location via an internet connection. It’s easier to collaborate too; with both the application and the data stored in the cloud, multiple users can work together on the same project, share calendars and contacts etc. It has been pointed out that if your internet connection fails, you will not be able to access your data. However, due to the ‘anywhere access’ nature of the cloud, users can simply connect from a different location - so if your office connection fails and you have no redundancy, you can access your data from home or the nearest Wi-Fi enabled point. Because of this, flexible / remote working is easily enabled, allowing you to cut overheads, meet new working regulations and keep your staff happy!
Disaster recovery / backup
Recent research has indicated that around 90% of businesses do not have adequate disaster recovery or business continuity plans, leaving them vulnerable to any disruptions that might occur. Providers like ThinkGrid can provide an array of disaster recovery services, from cloud backup (allowing you to store important files from your desktop or office network within their data centers) to having ready-to-go desktops and services in case your business is hit by problems. Hosted Desktops (or Hosted VDI) from ThinkGrid, for example, mean you don’t have to worry about worry about data backup or disaster recovery, as this is taken care of as part of the service. Files are stored twice at different remote locations to ensure that there's always a copy available 24 hours a day, 7 days per week.
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