Cloud, has been acting as one revolutionary force for the IT sector that deals with problems like raising up-time levels instantly, improving scalability, keeping a track of load balance of the cloud server and promoting agile functions among others which are some of the few characteristics cloud computing offers to the end-users.
Today, the real picture is that about two-thirds of the total work populace works from locations that are situated away from the headquarters. Furthermore, it is calculated that the number of mobile workforce are increasing day by day. Hence, you will find proprietors as well as business persons carrying out their businesses from everywhere. One can infer, that the emergence and prominence of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), has led people round the globe to expand their enterprises in terms of branch office or by employing mobile workforce.
SMBs are looking for the kinds of benefits cloud-based services can offer. The advantages can be included into three categories:
- The ability to access new capabilities for their businesses
- Reducing costs as cloud solutions offer economies of scale and
- Gaining access to IT security and management expertise.
SMBs are also able to increase or decrease IT expenditure as they can be offered different subscription levels to meet business needs and demands. So, an SMB might wish to add collaborative working as a new capability by utilizing a cloud-based collaboration solution, or it might not have the in-house IT expertise or infrastructure to manage enterprise level IT solutions on an SMB budget. Even a micro-business can access these kinds of tools.
Most SMB’s IT tends to run at full tilt and they need more servers to a point that it all becomes very fragmented. The biggest benefit is that IaaS allows SMBs to have access to quality and scalability of infrastructure, which they would not be able to build themselves.
IaaS particularly assists any SMB that finds itself in a rapid growth phase, but businesses aren’t totally constrained by technology. It’s therefore vital to carefully analyze why the cloud and IaaS are the right solutions.
Understanding SMBs
SMBs can’t afford a corporate mentality and they don’t have the opportunity to divide themselves into areas of expertise. SMBs aren’t always interested in infrastructure as their focus is on applications. SMBs just want to get access to functionalities that meet their business needs and which make them more productive.
For SMB clients, IaaS comes as a great time saver by dramatically reducing turnaround time and the service cost of the following tasks, all of which are necessary for any organization to maintain its server infrastructure:
• Provisioning a new server
• Adding disk space to a server
• Repairing failed hardware
• Procuring and regulating Windows or SQL licensing (or other software licensing where a IaaS model license “rental” is available)
• Backing up critical data in an off-site and geographically dispersed manner for disaster recovery purposes.
• Producing a duplicate of a server for testing or failover purposes
• Upgrading an aging server, or a server that was designed to support a smaller volume of users in a growing business.
COST ADVANTAGE
The IaaS model brings with it cash flow advantages to the SMB by spreading the cash flow impact of system upgrades into a more predictable monthly expense.
If we were to look at the cost factor; while considering the total cost of ownership for a premise based server by adding the cost over time to install and configure it, repair and maintain it, upgrade it when the time comes, properly license it, maintain its software and any upgrades, back it up reliably, and supply it with quality bandwidth for accessing it.
Adding all these expenses, one can easily exceed the cost of an IaaS server with a premise based server. Further, the premise based server has less flexibility, represents an unpredictable expense, yields increased downtime, and probably does not perform as well as its IaaS “equivalent”.
Bottom line: The operational, financial and strategic advantages of IaaS are numerous, including the ability to conserve capital, move costs from capital to expense budgets, and ensure IT performance, availability and security. IaaS also provides protection against obsolescence, and enables you to access new technologies that benefit your business.
So, the next time you, as a SMB decision maker, consider a new server, consider IaaS. Its time has come! It makes good business sense!
Contact us today at +91 9745550277 and ask us how your business can benefit from IaaS and the cloud.
Send your inquiries to sales@noconsolutions.com / arun@noconsolutions.com