Is the Cloud More than Your Business Needs?

Five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, many businesses have resolved to shift their operations and replace a lot of their onsite computing hardware with cloud solutions. While the cloud has proven to be a great method for businesses to obtain the resources they need without investing in the associated costs of a hardware refresh, its other costs could prove problematic. Let’s examine your options briefly and try to establish a sense of value.

Cloud Computing’s Benefits

In many ways, cloud computing seems like a bit of a no-brainer. As a secure and reliable platform, businesses can accomplish more without the concerns of security failures that once held them back. As a result, the cloud can provide the accessibility, mobility, and scalability today’s businesses need in a way that is very cost-effective. Since the provider maintains the cloud infrastructure, the business that subscribes to their services only needs to pay a manageable monthly fee.

Through this arrangement, businesses can access exactly the infrastructure that they will need—software and hardware maintenance included—available on a sliding scale. Any changes, increasing or decreasing resources, are as simple to make as can be. This simplicity is part of the reason that so many business processes are now entrusted to cloud services, from backup and communications to security and storage.

The Potential Downside to the Cloud

For all its benefits, there is one factor that makes the cloud a less appealing option: its costs.

Now, this can be hard for some people to believe. After all, an on-premise infrastructure requires you to purchase the expensive hardware and software needed to support it, deploy these resources where they are called for, and manage it. How can cloud computing be more expensive than that?

Simple: building an IT infrastructure has certain costs associated with it that need to be addressed.

That’s just it—the majority of cloud platforms aren’t delivered at a flat rate. While a service like Software as a Service can come at a relatively low monthly rate, once you begin the customization processes upon your cloud you’ll likely see your costs expand beyond what your own infrastructure would have cost.

The cloud can be either cost-effective or expensive. To help you avoid your budget being undermined by the added values of cloud computing, reach out to the IT professionals at Horne & Benik. We’ll assess your situation and assist you in implementing the best solution for your needs. Give us a call at (603) 499-4400 to learn more.