Top 5 cloud migration benefits for your data

Traditionally, organisations used to keep their data, applications and resources in on-premises servers in a bricks and mortar building. These would be maintained by a dedicated, on-site IT team.

But times have changed. Businesses have been moving their IT estates from on-premises into servers hosted and accessed on the internet.

The move towards cloud migration began slowly. But global events of the past few years has seen a rapid acceleration.

Yes, we all know about ‘cloud computing’, but why migrate to the Cloud? What’s in it for your organisation?

Simply put, there are many cloud migration benefits for your business.

Particularly when it comes to your data.

Read on to discover why storing your data in the cloud is safer, cheaper, and better for innovation.

It’s cheaper to store your data in the Cloud

Migrating and storing your data in the Cloud offers significant savings in resource, maintenance, and real estate costs.

Depending on the size of your business, a single physical server can set you back between £800-2500. They can be even pricier if you need more powerful or specialised servers.

Also, what if your business needs to expand? Servers take up room. If you’re sticking with on-premises servers, you’ll need to move to a larger office space to accommodate them. That’s more money you’re paying.

You’ll need a dedicated, on-site IT team to maintain them. The larger your server requirements, the larger your team will be. That’s going to cost you.

Now replicate this across every site, location, or office in your estate.

You could spend tens of thousands on your initial set up. Then you could be spending thousands a month on maintenance, fees, rents, and wages.

As you can see, capital and operational expenditure can quickly spiral. Making costs prohibitive for smaller businesses. And unnecessarily high for large organisations.

Your organisation could save a lot of money by getting your data out of costly, on-premises servers and into the Cloud.

Global collaboration is easier

Organisations using the cloud are no longer shackled to one geographical location. And your employees are no longer shackled to their desks.

Borders and time zones are no longer barriers to business.

When you store your business data in the Cloud, employees can take advantage of global collaboration tools to access it easily and securely.

Your employees will save time commuting to a physical location. Less HR and IT resources are needed for physical access to servers containing the necessary data.

And once data isn’t bound to a physical location, your employees aren’t bound by the opening hours of a physical office.  They can access that data wherever they are in the world, and at whatever time.

Protect your data when disaster strikes

Storing data on a single server at your premises may seem safe.

But it’s the equivalent of saving your money under a mattress.

Perfectly fine until disaster strikes.

What happens if your office burns down? Or is destroyed by flood, storm, earthquake, criminals, or meteor strike?

Okay, some are less likely than others. But the fact is, disaster can strike unannounced.

And that puts your data at risk of loss, breach, or compromise.

Storing data in the cloud mitigates the risk as it’s stored across different servers. The data can be accessed, even after disaster hits.

Having robust data protection and disaster recovery policies in place keeps you and your data safe. It also demonstrates that you’re doing your due diligence with sensitive data.

Which leads us nicely onto one of the next cloud migration benefits for your data.

Increase security and compliance features

Storing your business information and data in the Cloud lets your organisation take advantage of their robust security measures.

Most popular cloud providers offer a whole suite of security features baked into their service.

These include things like powerful security analytics tools. It also includes regular updates to their security technology, processes and policies.

Moving your data to the Cloud doesn’t just keep it safe, though. It’s increasingly easy to fall foul of compliance regulations.

Breaching UK GDPR regulations can be met with a maximum fine of £17.5 million (or 4% of annual global turnover).

Breaching EU compliance regulations can set you back €20 million, or about £18 million.

The ICO also isn’t shy about enforcing penalties against any company in breach of data protection regulations.

However, cloud services like Azure, Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud have compliance best practices on the server side. This means infrastructure is always covered.

Your organisation is still responsible for maintaining its security and compliance standards within their cloud environment. But you’ll have access to the built-in features of your cloud provider for monitoring and managing at-risk data.

Make better decisions with your data in the cloud

Having your data easily accessible to all of your employees wherever they are and whenever they want is a massive boon to your organisation.

That’s only half the battle, though. Data is only useful if you’re able to make sense of it.

The cloud migration benefits when it comes to processing data more effectively  are undeniable.

The larger cloud platforms have powerful data analysis and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that can pool all of your data together, analyse it, and quickly make sense of it.

They help you reveal business trends, highlight areas of success, and areas that need improvement.

Using these tools, you can transform your business data from a collection of disparate information into a story about your organisation.

And using that story, you can write your business’ next chapter and make educated decisions to help you flourish and grow.

Conclusion

The challenges around data remain the same as they’ve always been:

• Keep it safe
• Control who has access
• Use it for decision making

And lastly:

• Store it in a way that doesn’t break the bank

In an interconnected world, moving your data into the Cloud is the best way to meet those challenges.

The Cloud offers security and compliance tools that keep your data safe and in the right hands. It offers analytics tools that can make sense of it for your business.

Data in the Cloud can be accessed easily without physical, geographical or temporal constraints. An office burning down doesn’t spell the end of your data.

And best of all, with no servers, office space or IT staff to pay for, it costs less to store your data in the Cloud.

Why migrate to the Cloud? Because, as we’ve demonstrated here, the Cloud is your data’s native environment.

Key takeaways

Next steps

Sources

1. How much does a server for a business cost?
2. Information Commissioner’s Office – Penalties
3. Information Commissioner’s Office  – Action we’ve taken