How the cloud can be part of your unified business strategy?

Small and medium enterprises the world over are benefitting from the knowledge economy. Conventional business practices are being upended and a new wave of revolution is brewing in corporate boardrooms from New York to Nanjing, from London to Hindon. This one has its moorings in a certain technology called cloud-based solutions.

The best part of this story is that the power of the cloud is being harnessed not just in the services sector and tier-I cities but across a whole gamut of industries and even in hinterlands. Companies today are experimenting with cost-effective cloud platforms in order to leapfrog the competition and explore newer ways of doing businesses and gaining larger market shares in their respective domains.

How Shrink-wrapped Software is Passé & Agile Cloud is Hot?

• Legacy desktop software needed big investments in hardware, software and technical know how
• Pay-as-you-go cloud platforms are empowering cash-strapped SMEs like never before
• Thanks to the internet that has moved from its primordial dial-up avatar, cloud is catching up
• In a 21^st century global village, your work straddles different time zones in multiple continents and only the cloud can ensure your projects are available to all collaborators without a hitch
• Your data security has received a real shot in the arm thanks to big cloud vendors making data compromise a thing of the past
• No more crying foul over redundant software and incompatible suites which were so often the bane of an era bygone of legacy desktop computational methods
• In this day and age when the exigency for scaling up IT infrastructure can come at a moment’s notice, the cloud offers it all in the blink of an eye
• Customization in the true sense of the term is possible in this cloud era and this can save you precious dollars and time
• Moving on to the cloud is easier than you think as you can effortlessly incorporate your humungous volumes of data residing on legacy systems without being hobbled by data corruption or business process discontinuity issues
• Cloud-based software that is agnostic to variegated devices, operating systems, and such other nuances makes it one seamless world all the way
• You can conveniently forget about having large, well-resourced IT departments in your company and that is the biggest advantage of cloud-based solutions till date

Cloud Tools in Real-life Business Scenario

No business wants to concentrate less on its core competency and that is why the cloud can help in all such endeavors to grow and prosper thus –

• Harness the cloud for hosting, online back-up for all your data needs
• Deploy marketing automation for promoting and marketing your brand
• Cement customer relationship using various CRM tools available off the shelf or one customized to your exacting needs
• Benefit from SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)

1. SaaS deploys web applications managed by a third party and that which can be available at the client side on demand. Examples are – Google Apps, Cisco WebEx, Salesforce, et al.
2. PaaS is used for development, testing, app deployment and so on. It makes the whole process simple, swift and economical. You can also use this technology to manage virtualization, servers, networking and data storage. Example – Apprenda
3. IaaS is used for accessing, operating and monitoring your applications, data centers, Operating Systems, middleware, additional services on the virtualization layers, etc. Examples – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and the ilk

Thus the cloud can help you keep your costs in check, manage resources efficiently, enhance customer satisfaction, scale infrastructure on demand, respond to customer needs and market dynamics, monitor and track business processes with the upshot of staying on top of your business regardless of your industry sector or customer segmentation.