We here at Genesis love the cloud. We proudly provide it to our customers and even use it ourselves. We collectively cannot think of a single negative thing to say about it. But like most, before we made the switch we were hesitant. And that’s natural. But in the end, it’s a major component of any business structure, and of the future of computing infrastructure, itself. It’s the direction we’re headed towards, so might as well make things easier on yourself and understand the cloud so that you can make a smoother transition into a future that is getting more and more tech savvy.
Fear #1 – “It isn’t secure enough!”
Major cloud providers are aware of this fear. It’s an understandable fear because as technology advances, so do the skills of hackers. But Cloud providers are prepared and have some of the most comprehensive and advanced security systems in the world. Entrusting in the cloud, that is proven to work securely time and time again, is absolutely safer that placing that same amount of trust and important information in the hands of an in-house system, or an outside corporate IT team, for example.
Fear #2 – “The cloud isn’t reliable. What if I lose my data!”
If you’re anything like me, you’re a control freak. But when it comes to dealing with the cloud, there’s no way of getting around it, there is a sense of handing off the reigns to another entity and letting that control/manage all your data. But this is a good thing. It allows you to place your trust and your data in a reliable place, which gives you more time and effort to take care of other things. But what if you entrust the cloud with all your data, and then something happens to the cloud, causing you to not be able to access the data, or worse, the data is forever lost. Well there’s a solution to these types of issues. First off, the best of the best type of technology goes into the higher quality cloud systems. If the system, for whatever reason, goes down, they have backups, and then backups for those backups, and so forth. Also most cloud systems have set up contingency plans so that if your service ever goes down, it will come right back up without having to worry about putting your business on pause.
Fear #3 – “I don’t know if I can, or want to afford it. The cloud is too expensive!”
This is a an issue that a lot of businesses have. They initially believe that the cloud is something that will cost an arm and a leg. Quite the opposite. In fact, in most cases it is a nice trade-off. You can significantly lessen your capital expenditures, hardware costs, and office supplies cost and instead invest that money in a secure and reliable cloud system and just focus on paying those monthly operating costs. And just a word of advice, be cautious of cheap cloud services. There are plenty out there that are rather inexpensive, but that’s because they most likely don’t have strong data backup systems or contingency plans. If you’re going to invest in a cloud system, make sure it is one that can handle the workload. And it will be money well spent. Plus, there are many cloud services out there that cater to your needs, so you really will only be paying for what you need, rather than some set fee.
So basically, the cloud is something you should look into investing in. It’s secure, easily accessible, reliable time and time again, and most importantly, will make running your business more efficient and effective.
So hopefully by now some of your cloud fears have been put to rest. But if you still need more clarity on the cloud or have wholeheartedly jumped on the cloud bandwagon, check out our cloud pages!