24 Aug
The cloud helps alleviate many of the IT burdens and complexities that have long plagued businesses. In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the ways it eliminates specific costs and meets some important needs associated with employee training.
The Cloud Streamlines Employee Training, Decreasing Costs
When it comes to the cloud, you’re probably most familiar with giant providers such as Amazon Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Alphabet, and so forth. Many companies have leapt into the cloud in an effort to overhaul their IT departments. So, what are are the benefits of moving to the cloud and how does it improve your employee training?
I recently spoke with the CEOs of a couple big-brand restaurant and hotel chains and was surprised to learn of the high level of IT talent the organizations possess. Unlike software companies, however, it is more difficult for restaurants and hotels to manage their own servers for company assets. There is much more involved than just monitoring server performance. The process can quickly become challenging, risky and expensive.
That’s where the cloud steps in. The technology seamlessly streamlines employee training and provides consistency across company locations. Because it’s web-based and not dependent on an in-house server, training materials and courses can be accessed across mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. By moving to the cloud, in-person training is minimized and corresponding costs go down.
Here are some other ways moving to the cloud helps your business.
1. It Reduces Issues And Defects
Cloud computing allows you to deploy the same service or topology of services repetitively, yielding the same results every time. By reducing issues and defects, business continuity increases and less effort is wasted on operational issues, providing more time for the things that matter.
The cloud also lets you clone your infrastructure with the click of a button. For instance, if you want your database in another state or country, the cloud creates it for you. Apart from the cloud, you would have to physically go to each location to set up a new server. In this regard alone, the cloud can save you much time, effort and expense.
2. Productivity Increases
Acquiring appropriate computing resources often shortens IT projects, which results in less FTE to deliver the project at a quick and predictive time-to-market. Delivering results faster and at a lesser expense might just give your restaurant the competitive edge it needs.
Readily available cloud services also makes it easier to start innovative business initiatives. Combining these services can lead to new business models, generate new value propositions and additional revenue streams.
3. Leverage Costs Go Down
The cloud increases your energy efficiency by automatically powering down your servers when they’re not in use. The server capacity used in the cloud is also balanced by how much you need, rather than by physical location, so you aren’t forced to pay for more than what you use. The load balancer enables you pay by demand and according to the amount of traffic.
Keep in mind that in-house servers forces you pay a flat fee regardless of whether or not you use the maximum amount of available server power. This makes local infrastructures more expensive in the long run. It is likely that you won’t leverage the entire capacity you’ve purchased. If more users come to your servers than the system’s set up capacity, your services will be interrupted. An on-demand server power is better because it auto-scales.
4. People Costs Decrease
When it comes to restaurants’ computing costs, the staffing budget is usually the biggest single line item and often makes up more than half of the total. Skilled IT professionals are expensive; their salaries, benefits, and other employment costs usually exceed the costs of hardware and software – and that doesn’t even include recruiting expenses. The cloud solves this issue by eliminating the need for IT staff because you won’t have to implement or maintain servers within your building.
While you can hire software engineers to build and manage your system, it will add a great deal of expense. The cloud, however, allows you to maintain your technology without having to increase manpower. If your servers have an increase in demand the cloud will automatically scale; this alone greatly reduces the costs associated with scalability and maintenance.
Conclusion
You don’t have to put up with the inconveniences of managing your own servers or invest more manpower into an IT department. If you haven’t made the leap yet, I would encourage you to consider moving to the cloud. Being unpegged from the constraints of a local data center will give you more freedom and flexibility, and will help drive down the many expenses related to an IT department.
