Cloud computing was first conceived of in the late 1990s – although the idea of it is more than 50 years old. Since its conception, the cloud has transformed technology and the way the average person accesses services – in fact, people probably use cloud computing more frequently than they realise; ATMs have been powered by cloud computing for more than a decade, and modern on-demand streaming is reliant on the cloud. When we spoke to an IT support provider London businesses have been using for the last decade, they described the way the cloud has shaped their business, and the services they provide.
How does the Cloud work?
The best way to describe the cloud is a network of remote servers which can be used to store data and workloads on the internet, instead of on a local server or datacentre. There are a great many advantages to this approach compared with local server infrastructures – IT support services in London mostly utilize cloud computing nowadays, because it makes delivering support very efficient and flexible.
If your business chooses to work with Microsoft cloud-based products, then you should look for an IT Support partner who is also a trusted Microsoft Partner. They can provide your teams with expert support for when you are making use of Microsoft tools, like having your own Microsoft 365 consultant to help you make the best of your Microsoft solutions and applications that your teams and users make use of.
The cloud works by connecting several servers – usually in different geographical locations – together over the internet. The idea with the cloud is that not one single server is used to store or process data – instead, each server acts like a piece of the puzzle which, when put together, can be accessed centrally online. The cloud can be used for storage and computing needs for professional organisations.
How does it make IT easier?
The cloud can be leveraged in almost every single area of a business’ operations, and so can provide lots of benefits to those who use it. Below is a breakdown of the ways it makes information technology easier.
- Cost – IT can incur many costs for businesses – from investing in hardware and software, managing servers, hiring and training technicians, etc. The cloud can eliminate lots of these costs by shifting the responsibility for hardware and software investment to the cloud provider, meaning businesses only need to pay for their usage of the services.
- Security – cyber criminals are constantly looking for ways to exploit businesses, steal their data, and generally wreak havoc with organisation’s infrastructure. Leveraging the cloud for more robust security and governance can help a business protect themselves against hackers and scammers.
- Performance – the majority of cloud services run on global networks of servers and datacentres. Cloud providers invest a lot of time and money in maintaining their datacentres – upgrading the hardware and software, monitoring them performance issues and faults, and providing ongoing support. The performance of large-scale cloud computing services are very consistent and can help a business maintain high levels of performance.
- Backups – as mentioned in the point about security, businesses are always at risk from hackers and scammers; and not to mention the risk of incidents that damage or compromise their data. Backup plans are used by many businesses to protect their IT infrastructure because, in conjunction with disaster recovery, it helps ensure business continuity. With cloud computing, backups can be performed quickly and efficiently.
- Mobility – cloud computing can be used to centralise data and host apps and services remotely, which increases the mobility of a business. When staff are able to access data, apps, and services from the cloud, using any endpoint device, it means they can work from any location.
- Storage – local storage can become increasingly expensive over time, because a business will have to continually invest in additional hardware and servers to meet the increased demand for storage capacity. These investments can be very large; however, when using cloud storage, the provider will already have large-scale storage arrays linked to their datacentres, with more than enough capacity for all their customers. A business can easily scale up the storage they get from their cloud provider, and for a nominal ongoing fee moviesverse.
