Cloud computing offers several benefits in terms of scalability. Since businesses lease space and bandwidth on hardware owned by the cloud provider (a model known as “Infrastructure as a Service” or IaaS) rather than having to buy hardware outright, companies need only lease the amount of resources necessary to satisfy their immediate needs. They no longer have to buy a top-of-the-line server in hopes of maximum future-proofing only to use 10% of the machine’s processing power.
This pay-as-you-go model moves the expense of computing hardware from the capital expenditure column of the ledger to the operating expenditure category. No more purchasing expensive hardware to meet the needs of where your company might (or might not) be three years from now. Instead, the company pays a stable and predictable monthly fee to the IaaS provider.
This simple and inexpensive scalability extends to storage and RAM upgrades. An increase in disk space or processing power is just a phone call away.
Been wanting to try out a new software application, but don’t want to purchase an expensive license before you know it’s the best one for your needs? Many providers of top business productivity apps either already have a cloud-based version of their software or will soon. Several offer free trial periods, but if that’s not enough, you’ll still most likely only pay a monthly fee, not a full upfront purchase price.
With cloud’s almost limitless scalability, rapid provisioning, and pay-as-you-go model, leveraging the latest and greatest technology for your company no longer requires huge up-front costs, allowing small businesses to access tools previously available only to corporations with substantial IT budgets.
Did you miss last week’s webinar on Small Business and the Cloud? Click here to download and listen to it or any previous webinars from the CMIT Webinar Archive.
