Looking at the Good and Bad of Relying on the Cloud

Nowadays, businesses are turning to the cloud to help resolve more and more of their daily challenges, and for good reason—generally speaking, the cloud can handle most everything thrown at it. However, are we becoming too reliant on cloud services? Let’s try to strike a balance between the pros and cons of the cloud and our dependence on it today.

On the One Hand: Anytime, Anywhere Access

Perhaps most famously, the cloud has provided businesses and their users with—depending on their access to the Internet or application—ubiquitous access to work data, applications, and other resources wherever they happen to be. This mobility has become particularly important with the rise of remote work over the past few years, and the variety of devices that people now use throughout the workday.

On the Other: An Internet Connection is Required

The idea of having the option to work from wherever sounds great on paper. However, there is one critical caveat in the form of the need for an Internet connection. Without a reliable connection, or in the case of an Internet outage, you lose access to everything you rely on the cloud to provide. For instance, if you rely on a productivity suite for your day-to-day tasks that is part of a Software-as-a-Service subscription, losing your Internet means you’ve lost your software.

On the One Hand: The Cloud is Scalable and Flexible

Purchasing software outright can be expensive, particularly when you consider how many of your team members might need that software and the prospect of buying it all over again—potentially in a bundle that includes more than you need—when the improved version comes out. The aforementioned Software-as-a-Service model enables you to equip your team with the latest version of these tools at a predictable monthly rate, paying for each user’s instance of your cloud-based apps, services, and tools. Generally speaking, your budget appreciates cloud options.

On the Other: Cloud Sprawl is Effectively a Guarantee

The cloud can, if not managed properly, arguably become too scalable. For instance, let’s say that you have seven employees, each with their own space on your company’s cloud resources, each saving their work on four projects in their own folders in this space. That’s 28 different folders you suddenly have to dig through to find out what work has been done, never mind putting it all together. Unless you establish a specific and concrete location for this work to be saved (and sometimes even if you do), your business’ data and progress will be dispersed and disorganized.

We Can Help You Make the Most of Your Cloud Services and Solutions

While cloud computing isn’t perfect, it’s certainly closer to perfection than it is to the opposite. Cloud solutions make a lot of your processes far more accessible, which is hugely beneficial, and you have the option to utilize a public, private, or hybrid cloud depending on your control requirements. Effectively, the cloud gives you the option to customize your use to best fit your needs.

Reach out to us at (703) 821-8200 to learn more about your cloud options.