Historically, IT has required significant investment, and businesses have often underestimated how much it would cost them to purchase the necessary software and infrastructure they needed. This is one of the key things that cloud computing has been able to revolutionise. Now that businesses are able to access software and infrastructure on-demand, they can significantly lower their IT expenditure in both the short and long terms. We discussed this with a London-based managed IT support company, TechQuarters, which has been working with businesses for over 12 years, helping them leverage the cloud and streamline their IT budgets.
Cloud-first Strategies
Modern IT strategies are increasingly focused on cloud computing – this is known as a cloud-first strategy, and it has proved very effective for many organisations around the world. For example, TechQuarters’ work providing IT support for architecture companies has always been reliant on cloud strategy, as they often deliver support remotely, and they have helped many of their clients adopt this type of strategy, too. At its core, the value of a cloud IT infrastructure comes from the fact that its cost is spread across its entire lifecycle, unlike traditional on-premises infrastructure which required significant upfront expenditure. But what are some of the specific cost-saving benefits of cloud computing?
- Optimized Infrastructure
With physical, server-based infrastructure, businesses typically have to account for growth and invest in more than what they need in the present. Then, of course, there are situations where businesses experience fluctuations in demand for and utilization of infrastructure. All of this adds up to IT infrastructure where a certain portion is left unused. On the other hand, cloud infrastructure is scalable – meaning businesses only need to pay for what they use – and it grows with demand.
2. Streamlined Staff Costs
Another way that cloud computing can be used to manage business costs is by optimising the time and focus of IT staff. Oftentimes, IT staff get bogged down with routine maintenance, troubleshooting, manual updates, and countless other low-value, time-consuming responsibilities that are associated with running IT infrastructure. TechQuarters, who have provided cloud-driven IT support Guildford companies have used to free up their own staff time, confirmed that much of the routine maintenance of cloud infrastructure can either be automated or streamlined to such a degree that it takes a fraction of the time compared with on-premise alternatives. This allows IT staff to focus on higher value, innovative work.
3. Lower Utilities
A major cost of IT infrastructure – historically – is power. Businesses running infrastructure on-premises are responsible for paying to power said infrastructure. The bigger a company is, the more infrastructure they need, and therefore the more they spend on utilities. Conversely, cloud infrastructure is powered by the provider, not the user. This means that businesses no longer need to account for utilities in their IT budget.
4. Operational Expenditure
Owing to how cloud resources can be utilized on-demand, and scaled up and down in an instant, businesses move away from long-term capital expenditure in their IT budget, and adopt an operational expenditure (Opex) approach. The ability to make infrastructure a part of their IT opex means businesses get a lot more prediction power over their budgets and have more actionable data to work on further optimizing their resources.
5. IT Resilience
Traditionally, with on-premises IT infrastructure, IT resilience has been closely tied to redundancy. This is because businesses had to rely on physical infrastructure, which is much more inflexible. The trouble with redundancy is that it can double (or even triple) the cost of infrastructure. According to TechQuarters, whose experience providing IT support for education has given them a lot of perspectives, cloud computing offers resilience in a different way. As data and workloads in the cloud are never tied to a single location, they are much less vulnerable than servers. This means businesses can get that crucial IT resilience at a fraction of the traditional cost.
Cloud computing has radically transformed the way we do business – including a move towards more cost-effective IT strategies for organisations.
