Moving your systems to the cloud might seem like a big step, especially if you run a small business. On the surface, it might sound like something more in the domain of big firms or tech companies, something that could complicate or disrupt the smooth day-to-day of your business.

However, cloud systems can often simplify how your business runs, help you bridge the gap to bigger rivals and make things such as data security that much easier. Here, we look at a few reasons why your business, no matter how small, should consider moving to the cloud.

Go mobile

During the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s likely that you and your employees have engaged in some remote work. However, even before the pandemic, as the owner of a small business, it’s almost certain that you’ve had to do plenty of work outside of office hours and outside of the office.

With the world of remote work only likely to continue growing in the wake of COVID-19, cloud technology can make the process of operating outside the office far smoother and can benefit your business going forward.

With a cloud-based infrastructure, you and your team can easily collaborate on shared work platforms, making remote work quicker and easier and ensuring that there is no lack of communication, despite being miles apart.

It has also been shown, especially during lockdown, that remote working can drastically improve work-life balance, making for a happier, more productive team.

Scalability and flexibility

As a small company, you will undoubtedly be targeting growth, especially after so long treading water during the COVID-19 pandemic. A cloud system can help facilitate this, offering a scalability and flexibility that physical, on-premises infrastructure can’t.

With a physical system, when expanding you can end up paying for more than you need, leaving you with dormant capacity that’s providing no value. With cloud technology, you pay for what you use and can scale up quickly and easily as and when you need.

A cloud service can enable you to expand to more locations and add more staff without the need to buy a whole new load of hardware. You can simply scale up to add new users, new servers or teams. This added capacity is available at the click of a button and, again, you’ll only pay for what you need.

Cost-efficiency

With the cloud, you’re on a subscription service and pay as you upgrade. That means next to no capital expenditure on hardware, no maintenance costs when this hardware fails, as well as lower expenses for power, replacing legacy hardware, cooling etc.

You'll pay a setup fee when you move to the cloud, monthly or annual subscription costs and costs when you add capacity and that’s about it. What’s more, a cloud service is more reliable than on-premise infrastructure, meaning that costly downtimes will be less frequent.

Security

A data breach is an absolute worst-case scenario for many companies and can have a huge impact on your finances, customer data and reputation as a business. With a cloud solution, you’ll have efficient, robust security.

Your cloud provider will have an expert team dedicated to protecting your data and backing it up in case of disaster striking. This can give you peace of mind and leave you more free time to focus on your business’ core offerings.


Overall, a cloud solution offers a whole host of advantages that can make your business more modern, more efficient, more secure and, ultimately, more successful.