Every day, the world wakes up to new platforms, services, and applications promising endless operational benefits, improved IT management, sizeable cost reductions, and with one common denominator: it’s all happening “in the cloud”.

There is no denying that the new technological paradigm of cloud-computing has opened a new era of information technology. But when considering the nitty-gritty technical details of actually “moving to the cloud”, many small businesses are faced with the task of sifting through piles of marketing fluff.

To help clear the fog, our role as a IT network services provider is not just to generally raise awareness about the newly available options that can improve overall operations. As “cloud brokers” dedicated to small and medium businesses our duty is to clearly demonstrate how you can fulfill your goals within the scope of your budget and resources and generally achieve a higher standard through cloud services.

In this first post, we will take a quick look at three potential key benefits to moving specific IT resources to the cloud. More specifically, how to help your business achieve higher standards, improve network security, increase overall performance and benefit from on-demand scalability. These are not the only advantages from cloud-computing, but those that we believe are the most beneficial for small businesses willing to get immediate results from such a transition.

In our next installments, we will give you more insight with key numbers from recent studies and real-life examples of small businesses successfully implementing cloud services, hoping this will inspire you to consider how you may do the same for your own business.

Keep in mind that we’re not here to sell you “the cloud” but simply help you make some sense out of this “cloud fluff” and gain real competitive advantage only where and when it matters. Feel free to mail us with comments and remarks as we embark together on this journey, and do not hesitate to give us a call to get answers for your most pressing questions.

Affordable higher standard

This is an advantage that partially carries over from the hosted service model. Cloud service providers maintain a higher standard across the board, based on the demand of a large pool of customers and the ever-looming factor of competition in the marketplace. It just makes sense that service providers would invest serious time and money into data protection, data security, infrastructure maintenance, standards adoption, and so on. This model allows SMBs to maintain a higher standard for their employees and customers without the capital expenditure.

Improved security

Small to medium sized businesses have the same security concerns that large businesses do. Some enterprises (such as in finance and health sectors) are hesitant to adopt cloud computing, having strong security and privacy concerns. SMBs, while voicing the same concerns, should be much more willing to adopt cloud services. This follows on the logic of the affordable higher standard. If you are serious about your data security you should take an honest look at your infrastructure and applications. Are they really more secure behind your firewall on your private server? How did your IT department fair on your last PCI audit?

Improved performance

Through cloud computing, small to medium sized businesses can improve accessibility, scalability, and availability. Cloud service providers put global resources at your fingertips: compute intensive applications can grow on demand with auto-scaling; content can reach the ends of the earth through content delivery networks. You as the customer get all the benefits of a high performance engine, while only paying for what you really use.

Of course, I've only been scratching the surface of some of the main benefits of cloud adoption here, but bare with me and we shall explore together in more detail how you can really take home the best of the flurry of new technological options that are out there.

In truth, I am not heralding the cloud as the solution to all IT evils, but with all the fluff you read about how it helps Fortune 500 companies and corporate giants, I for one believe small businesses ought to know how it might help them too.

Coming up: Elevate to a higher standard with cloud services.

For more information about Amoeba Networks and how we can help you reap immediate benefits from our experience with cloud services, please visit https://www.amoebanetworks.com/, call us at (212) 444-9780, or contact us via email at info@amoebanetworks.com.