Why Your Business Should Have Cloud Storage
Have you yet to adapt your small business to cloud storage? Are you unsure of how this emerging (and increasingly popular) technology can make your work easier or save you money? If so, you’re missing out on a slew of benefits that could take your business to the next level – but not for long.
Being among the leading IT companies in New Zealand, our team at Dynamite IT knows cloud storage technology inside and out, and the myriad of ways it benefits small businesses. In fact, we recommend all of our clients utilise cloud storage. After you read this article, we think you’ll see why.
Increased Protection
Physical servers are antiquated in many ways, but their chief weakness is their locality. Power surges or outages can knock local servers offline or permanently damage them. Natural disasters could destroy your servers and your data with them. They suffer from what’s referred to as a single point of failure, meaning that your local server impacts your entire business operation if it becomes damaged, potentially eliminating all of your digital resources simultaneously and unilaterally.
Cloud storage works differently. Your data saves in multiple backups across several servers, none of which are in your building and all of which are managed by a remote IT team. If one cloud server experiences trouble, your data and software are still safe thanks to several redundant backups, and you can continue to work without a problem.
While it’s true that you can create backups of physical servers, it has a much higher time and resource cost and requires physical space for each data backup. Cloud options keep the price low and need no room in your building, as well as provide redundant backup solutions so your data is always protected.
Make Collaboration and Work More Efficient
The speed with which your employees can share data leads to improved productivity and team synergy. With every employee receiving access to the same cloud storage, sharing files and projects has never been easier. If your company uses Dropbox to share files, then you’re already making use of cloud technology on a small scale, but likely missing out on the myriad of benefits that full cloud storage has to offer.
When you’re using cloud storage, you can complete work anywhere. You can choose to give employees access from their homes or mobile devices. Remote work possibilities are endless, and with such access options in place, you can make updates at a moment’s notice, no matter the distance between team members. These solutions have become increasingly important in the past year as the majority of the world has shifted to an at-least partially-remote workforce while combatting the pandemic.
Enhanced Security Against Attacks
Sadly, hacks and data breaches are common in the business world, and you don’t need to be well known to be a target. As conventional security software and measures need constant updates against increasingly sophisticated attacks, protecting on-site servers becomes a time-consuming endeavor.
Each employee with access to your servers can become a point of failure, despite comprehensive security measures. Exploiting human error allows bad actors to compromise your data without much effort, especially if there is a weak link in your system, human or digital.
While there’s no perfect method of digital security, cloud storage–by its nature–has numerous advantages. Each cloud backup makes it easier to restore lost or stolen data. Because your information saves in multiple instances across several servers, it’s much harder to target it all, and finding a single point of entry is nearly impossible. Moreover, remotely hosted servers typically utilise enterprise- or even military-grade encryption, offering the highest levels of security for your (and your clients’) data.
Save Money on Many Fronts
When you buy your server, it’s not a one-time purchase. Servers require maintenance and, occasionally, repairs to continue functioning. They also need a considerable amount of power to run twenty-four hours a day. When they aren’t live, it may hinder your work and cost you more in wasted labor hours (and potentially lost sales from your website). As you and your company grow, you may need to expand your server, increasing related costs.
By comparison, you’re responsible for very little of the costs associated with cloud storage options. You’ll pay for the service, including the amount of storage you use, but that’s it. The data center housing the cloud servers are responsible for their upkeep and power consumption. From the user perspective, cloud servers are a very hands-off experience.
Simple Scalability
As your business continues to grow, your storage needs will need to grow along with it. Buying, configuring, and maintaining your servers as you grow becomes more and more complicated. Can you predict how much more space you’ll need? Can you reasonably pace your growth, so you know when to invest more money in storage and IT?
Cloud storage data centers are capable of storing incredible amounts of data from hundreds of thousands of sources. Their massive number of servers means they can be flexible with how they sell space. Most bill you based on how much data you store but don’t put a hard limit on the amount you can use. Rather than having to buy servers of a set size every time you grow, you can simply use more cloud storage and get billed for what you use.
Dynamite IT Has Your Business Covered
Whether you’re looking at integrating cloud storage into your business, need a New Zealand business number, or general IT services, Dynamite IT is here to help. We’re always at the forefront of new information technologies and implementing them into your business best.
As a Wellington based business ourselves, we understand the needs of local businesses. We have tailored our range of managed products and IT services to take the hassle out of your business infrastructure. Our response time is fast as we are based in Upper Hutt and service the Wellington region including Lower Hutt, Wellington CBD and Porirua City.
Dynamite IT believes in building streamlined IT systems that run so smoothly that you forget they’re there in the background. On top of professional IT systems, we also provide expert IT support to ensure you never feel alone. For a local team that can help with everything from 0800 numbers to web design, we are the IT experts you can trust and rely on – give us a call today.