Move your workloads to global cloud infrastructure

Cloud adoption is accelerating faster than previously anticipated, leading Forrester to recently revise its 2011 forecast of the public cloud market size upward by 20 percent. Whether you’re looking at Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), the predictions are the same: fast growth of the workloads placed in the cloud and an increased percentage of the total IT budget going toward cloud computing.

These are some advantages of cloud computing that organizations are experiencing today, leading to quantifiable improvements in their businesses:

1. Fresh Software

With SaaS, the latest versions of the applications needed to run the business are made available to all customers as soon as they’re released. Immediate upgrades put new features and functionality into workers’ hands to make them more productive.

2. Do more with less

With cloud computing, companies can reduce the size of their own data. The reduction of the numbers of servers, the software cost, and the number of staff can significantly reduce IT costs without impacting an organization’s IT capabilities.

3. Flexible costs

The costs of cloud computing are much more flexible than traditional methods. Companies only need to commission – and thus only pay for – server and infrastructure capacity as and when it is needed.

4. Always-on availability

The connection is always on and as long as workers have an Internet connection, they can get to the applications they need from practically anywhere.

5. Improved mobility

Workers can take their work anywhere via smart phones and tablets—roaming through a retail store to check customers out, visiting customers in their homes or offices, working in the field or at a plant, etc.

6. Improved collaboration

Cloud applications improve collaboration by allowing dispersed groups of people to meet virtually and easily share information in real time and via shared storage.

7. Cloud computing is more cost effective

Because companies don’t have to purchase equipment and build out and operate a data center, they don’t have to spend significant money on hardware, facilities, utilities and other aspects of operations.

8. Expenses can be quickly reduced

During times of recession or business cut-backs (like the energy industry is currently experiencing), cloud computing offers a flexible cost structure, thereby limiting exposure.

9. Flexible capacity

Cloud is the flexible facility that can be turned up, down or off depending upon circumstances. For example, a sales promotion might be wildly popular, and capacity can be added quickly to avoid crashing servers and losing sales. When the sale is over, capacity can shrink to reduce costs.

10. Facilitate M&A activity

Cloud computing accommodates faster changes so that two companies can become one much faster and more efficiently. Traditional computing might require years of migrating applications and decommissioning data centers before two companies are running on the same IT stack.

11. Less environmental impact

With fewer data centers worldwide and more efficient operations, we are collectively having less of an impact on the environment. Companies who use shared resources improve their ‘green’ credentials