As companies get ready to prepare their 2021 budgets, they are focusing on cost savings, and they're looking to the cloud for help. Average cloud spending is up 59% in 2018 to $73.8 million in 2020 – with the figure expected to grow by 47% in 2021. Cloud-based technologies are sought-after by businesses across all industries to help cut costs for many reasons. Two include current global financial conditions as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the need for data modernization, which involves moving data from legacy to modern databases.
Here, we explore three ways a cloud strategy can help cut down costs for businesses during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Leveraging the Pay-as-You-Go Model
Cloud technologies require businesses to move from capital expenditure models to operational expenditure. Businesses using the cloud will only pay for what they use – when they use it, which makes the cloud an ideal fit for smaller organizations. This model enables them to scale more easily – testing out new applications and technologies without having to shell out the big bucks for more hardware. In this serverless scenario, your business doesn't have to buy a new server to have new capacity. Instead, you can scale up through the cloud, buying additional capacity, when needed, and testing and running new services in a cost-effective way.
Reduce Maintenance & Software Spending
With a cloud strategy, you can put a stop to support and maintenance costs like power,. cooling, and software expenses. According to a Microsoft survey, 49% of small businesses use the cloud to lower costs.
Software can be an expensive resource for organizations. Rather than spending money to buy and maintain separate software packages for every single computer in the organization, subscribing to cloud-based software and services for a low monthly fee can help cut down the cost of running these infrastructures.
Rest Easy With Secure Data Backup
Loss of critical data and applications is one of the worst nightmares that can happen to a business. Disastrous events that can compromise organizational infrastructure take many forms, including network failures, power outages, data breaches, human errors, and more. The inability to access critical data and applications for a day could be enough to drive an institution to bankruptcy.
The cloud can help make sure you’re able to retrieve the latest versions of your data in the case of an on-site system failure or a disaster. You can choose cloud-based disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) to back up critical data automatically to a safe online location and reduce disruption when the unexpected happens. Having this secure data backup in the cloud can prevent you from digging deep into your pockets later on to repair your business after a breach.
Consider a Cloud Strategy to Cut Costs in 2021
Maximizing your budget – especially when it comes to IT – is a continuous process that is often affected by both internal and external factors. However, finding a balance and saving cost isn’t always hard to achieve.
If you’re considering cutting down costs, it’s time to look into what the cloud can offer. Contact Enterprise Visions today and explore the enormous benefits of cloud computing. We do the heavy lifting for you.