The Great Benefits Of Public Cloud Services

It started as just a new “buzzword” but is now an established industry with a turnover of 154 billion dollars. In the initial days, there was a fear of security problems but now cloud services are a crucial part of many companies.

According to Gartner’s Top Technology Big Data Trends for small and medium-sized companies, two-thirds now use cloud services, and the last third is looking at introducing public cloud services in their operations in the future. In fact, sales for cloud services are expected to grow by 21.4% this year alone. Until 2020, it is expected that 41% of the IT capacity for larger companies will be run as a cloud service, which is an increase of 10% from the current level.

How come cloud services have become so popular? We’ve heard a lot about the public cloud, but here are the five most important and biggest benefits for your business.

Table of Contents

5 major benefits of the public cloud.

Scalable

Probably the absolute biggest advantage of public clouds is the ability to easily scale up and down, thanks to the flexibility that comes with monthly-based subscriptions. Such a subscription has a minimal entry cost and can be canceled at any time. This allows the business to adapt its IT investments to the actual need. Instead of paying for the highest level of capacity needed on occasion, the cost becomes a means of the capacity actually required. It is a perfect model for scalability. When the need for extra capacity increases, the business does not have to take investment costs directly but can increase dynamically.

Increased security

Confidence in security in public clouds has increased sharply in recent years. Cloud providers have built better proactive services and customers have reported significantly more positive experiences. It is even the case that 94% of companies say that the move to cloud services has given them equivalent or better IT security compared to the previous service in their own data centers. Another study shows that, by 2020, more than 95% of shortcomings in IT security will arise due to handling errors at the customer and not in the service itself. This means that the conversation about IT security will move from the question of whether the public cloud is secure to focusing on how the business itself can ensure that the cloud is used in a secure and efficient way.

Large cloud providers that have the ability to scale out globally also have the ability to build sophisticated IT security systems that use technologies such as AI and Machine Learning. It also means that public cloud providers have the opportunity to employ the greatest talent in IT. They can build dedicated departments that monitor IT security in the cloud 24/7 to proactively detect threats, counter cyber-attacks and thereby reduce the risk of intrusion and data loss. In addition to this, virtually all public cloud providers offer opportunities for automatic backups and disaster solutions, which further increases the stability and security of the services.

Innovation

Cloud-based apps, services, and storage provide opportunities for companies to take advantage of the rapid technological development that is taking place in the market. The companies that buy cloud services benefit greatly from the fact that the supplier maintains and constantly updates the services so that they can focus on developing their own products. In addition to this, they also save money by reducing the need for internal IT staff and costs for their own data centers. These savings can be added to the budget for the development of the company’s services thanks to the flexibility of month-based subscriptions.

Greater flexibility

The major driving force for cloud services in recent years has been the pressure on savings within the IT budget. Today, however, the need to be able to act quickly and flexibly is the major driving force. The latest study from IDG, the 2018 Cloud Computing Survey, shows that the two decisive factors for the business’ decision to buy cloud services lie in being able to deliver IT services faster (71%) and that it makes them more flexible (63%). The public cloud helps companies become more flexible for two crucial reasons.

First, by moving IT investments to cloud services, the business can reduce its investment and move it to variable costs instead. Through this restructuring, it enables companies to respond quickly and flexibly to the market’s requirements for their services.

Second, cloud-based agreements can be concluded very easily, if a good structure for the company’s IT services has been built up in the cloud, it is also easy to move to a new public cloud provider. This means that public clouds or hybrid clouds can counteract lock-in, which can easily be the case with On-prem solutions and suppliers. This counteracts the risks of sitting with old technical equipment and outdated solutions.

Always the latest technology

Investments in public cloud services involve an investment in future technologies. Unlike local data center solutions that are to be purchased, maintained, and replaced at a high investment cost, public cloud services are always up-to-date. Thanks to the high competition that exists in the market for public clouds, cloud providers must constantly invest in their infrastructure to offer the absolute best service.

If a customer is dissatisfied, it is relatively easy to change supplier. Thanks to this, public cloud vendors such as Microsoft Azure, constantly develop improvements, such as automatic patch management for machines in Azure, change the hardware regularly and handle all maintenance with minimal downtime so that customers always have the latest technology at hand to build their own solutions.

Summary

Despite these 5 reasons, are you still unsure if the public cloud is a good choice for your business? Then feel free to read our Cloud Checklist where you get valuable advice on how your company can make a move out into the cloud.