Once upon a time, taking on any technical initiative required a lengthy process of evaluating the needs and approving funding, followed by an equally lengthy process of looking for the right product and/or vendor relationship, which culminated in a third lengthy and troublesome process of installing and implementing the hardware and software necessary. It didn’t end there. That was merely the beginning of maintaining and troubleshooting the new system. Every technical advancement the business made came with an equal amount of extra work and expense.

How the Cloud Solves the Hassles & Expense Woes of IT

Enter, stage right, the cloud. The cloud eliminates all of this hassle and costliness, while also freeing up your employees for more productive work. Acquiring cloud services is far less costly, so it isn’t necessary to convene the board of directors for a 2-hour meeting on budgeting for the project. Most of the products you need (whether it’s some storage space or a whole software system) are already developed, so there’s no need for a drawn-out process of laying out the requirements of the system. Simply get what you need from what’s available, similar to selecting aspirin off the drugstore shelf.

The cloud also eliminates the installation and implementation process, which any seasoned IT pro can tell you is where the headache truly begins. Installation and implementation often come with a host of other difficulties, such as integration and compatibility issues, that can run tech projects over budget and past deadline as often as not. Plus, the cloud alleviates the ongoing maintenance, troubleshooting, and customer service that has historically consumed so much of IT’s time and resources.

How the Cloud Changes the Focus of IT

What will your business do with more time, money, and potential for productivity? Perhaps IT can take on a big data initiative so that your business can keep pace with the competition. Perhaps you can finally begin development on that mobile app your marketing department has been screaming about, or even start addressing the technical debt that causes your legacy systems to crash so often.

The cloud frees up your staff to:

• Take IT staff off low-level assignments and give them more challenging work. As it becomes harder to retain IT talent, this could mean the difference in keeping your top employees or losing them to your competitors.
• Roll out new IT services without any capital investments whatsoever.
• Stall hiring — you won’t need a fully-staffed data center, so you won’t have to take on workers in an uncertain world economy.

How the Cloud Improves IT’s Potential

How can your business and IT department benefit from the cloud?

• Pay for only what you need, only when you need it.
• Scale your storage and compute resources to meet your needs. Starting a new development project? You can get more as quickly as you need it. Done with a development and testing environment? It’s gone, and you haven’t wasted any investments in IT hardware or software.
• Stop begging and pleading for a bigger CapEx budget for IT and shift costs for valuable IT services to the OpEx (operational expense) side of the ledger.
• Remove the mystery from IT expenses. Few C-level executives even understand IT requests for money for things like AMD V or why the need for a “cabinet” that costs $1,000 instead of $100.

What are some of the time-consuming, monotonous, tedious (and, yes, boring) tasks that the cloud can take off your IT team?

• Backup, storage, and disaster recovery
• Managing remote access and a mobile workforce
• Testing and development of software
• Data center management
• Cyber security

All these services (and more!) can be set up quickly to improve your IT department’s efficiency and improve the business’ ability to be productive and competitive — and it’s all available for less money than you might think. Contact TOSS C3 to request a quote now.