Choosing the right cloud solution for your business

There was a time, not too long ago, when we all carried little thumb drives wherever we went. It was kind of amazing, we could transfer large files from computer to computer without any trouble. Now, in the time of cloud computing, it’s kind of hard to believe the humble USB was actually a pretty nifty innovation and improvement on file-sharing.

But technology has moved quickly, and now we just shoot things into ‘the cloud’ and they become accessible wherever there’s an internet connection.

The cloud, though, does much more than facilitate file sharing. It can be your server, software manager, database, network, analytics system… and believe it or not, much, much more.

Why should you adopt a cloud service?

There are huge benefits to shifting away from traditional IT operations to the cloud.

The first and probably the most compelling reason is actually cost. Cloud services reduce the amount of hardware a business requires. You can say goodbye to your physical server/s, which will not only save you on the cost of the machines, but also money spent on energy and floorspace.

Plus, in many instances, cloud services will also save you money by charging only for what you use.

Then, just to rattle off a few more benefits — cloud services can give your business global scalability, more agility, productivity, reliability and performance. Let’s just say these days adopting a cloud service is a bit of a no brainer.

How do you know which service will best suit your business?

The answer depends on a number of factors: how your business operates, its size and industry, the number of users, its storage needs, and of course, your budget.

Let’s start with why you might choose Google’s G-Suite.

G-Suite is pretty basic and is often the preferred by younger, smaller tech savvy companies who are used to simple file sharing and user-friendly functionality. One drawback is, G-Suite offers users less functionality in it’s apps, such as Google Docs, Slides and Sheets. This can be fine, it just depends how much functionality your business needs.

Compare this with Office 365.

Microsoft Office is legacy software for many organisations. It’s preferred by large organisations for whom large scale change can be a bit of battle. But, it has great benefits too, particularly when it comes to functionality. Microsoft Excel, for instance, has far superior functionality to its Google counterpart, Sheets. Same with Microsoft Word as oppose to Google Docs, and PowerPoint as compared with Slides.

Essentially though, by themselves, G-Suite and Office 365 are mostly used by small and not very complex companies and individuals.

For larger more complex operations who require more services one of the big three might be more suitable.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are what are called public cloud services, and though we’ve only mentioned three, there are actually a host of other public cloud services who have similar or specialised offerings.

Apart from offering more scalable and ultimately more affordable storage options, the big three and their counterparts have a range of services that can help your business and IT services run more smoothly. For example, they can be set up to automatically install software patches at off-peak times, back up your data without prompt, and manage your server usage so you are  only charged for what you use and not for what you don’t.

What makes these public cloud services good at what they do is they have discovered that by saving your business time, hassle, and money, they can bolster their bottom line.

The other good news for their users is that they are in fierce competition with each other, which means they are investing big in improving their suite of services and applications and finding new ways of making your business more productive.

So, if your business needs more from the cloud, then investigating these cloud services will be well worth your time. If you want the experts to recommend the best cloud service for your business, then get in touch with us at JMIW for a free IT audit.