No Modern Workplace is complete without Cloud computing – between 2022-2027, the global cloud professional services market is expected to see a compound annual growth rate of 17.6%. So, just what are the productivity and profits to be gained from making the move, and just how much could it cost your Professional Services business?

To ensure that your Professional Services business is as efficient and profitable as possible, you need to be investing in the most effective technologies and methods of computing. By moving your business to the Cloud and investing in Cloud computing, you’ll deliver excellent benefits to improve productivity and profitability, while streamlining your operations.

 

Let’s First Explain Cloud Computing

Cloud computing delivers on-demand, pay-as-you-go IT resources over the internet. Your Cloud provider will deliver your services, which can be accessed from any location, at any time and from practically any device connected to the internet – Mac, PC, tablet, smart phone… Practically all Professional Services businesses, of any size and in any vertical, can benefit from implementing Cloud computing for data backup, email, virtual desktops, software development, training, testing, big data analytics and customer-facing web applications. There are a few variants of Cloud deployment: there’s the Private Cloud, the Public Cloud and the Hybrid Cloud, named in line with where the infrastructure is located, and who has access to it. So, what are the differences between the types of Cloud computing solutions?

The Private Cloud

The Private Cloud is defined as computing services offered either over the Internet or a private internal network, and only to select users instead of the general public. – Microsoft

The Public Cloud

The Public Cloud is defined as computing services offered by third-party providers over the public Internet, making them available to anyone who wants to use or purchase them. They may be free or sold on-demand, allowing customers to pay only per usage for the CPU cycles, storage, or bandwidth they consume. – Microsoft 

The Hybrid Cloud

Sometimes called a Cloud hybrid, the Hybrid Cloud is a computing environment that combines an on-premises datacentre (also called a Private Cloud) with a Public Cloud, allowing data and applications to be shared between them. Some people define hybrid Cloud to include “multi-Cloud” configurations where an organisation uses more than one public Cloud in addition to their on-premises datacentre.

So, How Can Cloud Computing Benefit Your Professional Services Business?

We’ve listed some of the top benefits of Cloud computing, but there are many more, especially if we look at the specific benefits for business models and verticals, but we’ll keep this broad. If you’d like to know the benefits for your specific business, you can simply get in touch.

Cloud Security Solutions

Many businesses still don’t trust Cloud solutions, assuming that ‘keeping it in-house’ is the most secure and safe option. However, despite no longer having your data under your technological control, a third-party firm can look after your data far more securely than most businesses are able to. Cloud solutions providers ensure robust security protocols and clearly define the systems that will be managing your data.

 

Efficient Collaboration for Your Teams

Cloud services such as Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365 deliver fantastic collaboration benefits, allowing multiple collaborators to work on the same projects simultaneously. These solutions have been invaluable in the move to remote working.

Remote working is a breeze with Cloud computing; files, services, and data are easy to share, and collaboration is super-simple among both colleagues and external parties, no matter where they’re located.

 

Environmental and Sustainability Benefits

For businesses now, ensuring a reduction in their carbon footprint and delivering sustainability can be a factor for employees choosing their next career, and is a key factor for clients choosing their suppliers and partners. Moving to the cloud will reduce your carbon footprint and can be a factor in both candidates’ and prospects’ choices. Cloud services can even remove the need for computing hardware on-premise, which alone delivers great sustainability benefits. Should your business model allow your teams to work from home, you’ll be also eliminating carbon emissions associated with commuting into the office. With your carbon footprint greatly reduced, and more people working from home, you may even be able to make further savings and move to a smaller office.

 

Increased Responsiveness

Your virtual cloud solution ensures that your business can react much quicker to any internal requests. If your business model has highs and lows of service needs, or perhaps encounters increases and decreases in demands at certain times of the year, month, week or day, your cloud services can help. By increasing or decreasing your cloud requirements to meet demand you’ll eliminate the problem of over-provisioning or underdelivering. Your cloud computing solution can ensure your company is flexible, deliver functionality as needed, and adjust efficiently as your business circumstances change.

It pays for businesses to be adaptable. The world, the economic climate and technology is continually changing, and your business may need be able to react and adapt quickly so as not to be left behind. Should your market change, or your business need to modify to an opportunity or threat, it’s far easier to be reactive with a Cloud environment.

Being Prepared for a Disaster

Loss of data can cost a company, even put them out of business. Be it system or hardware failure, accidental deletion, cyber attack, sabotage, force major or some other disaster, the repercussions can be devastating. With cloud services, your entire data environment is continually saved, ready to be deployed should anything happen to your original data.

 

Competitive Reactive Solutions

Cloud services deliver increased business agility. Your business can react to change, circumstance, opportunities, and threats much, much faster that any competitor with an on-prem solution. This competitive advantage means that your business can seize opportunities quicker than your competitors. Your ability to develop products and respond to customer needs in a timely manner is greatly improved, as the power of cloud services mean that small companies have the same reactivity and IT solutions that much larger business have. Fantastic news for small businesses who can scale up much quicker.

 

Management of ‘Big Data’

Conventional data storage solutions were cumbersome when it came to advanced data analysis. Even for large businesses, data evaluation has been a complicated and long-winded process. With Cloud solutions, big data analysis is a breeze, another fantastic advantage gain for small businesses wanting to compete with much larger competitors. Along with the added bonus of increased layers of cloud security available with cloud solutions, the advantages of big data are available to all companies.

 

Expected Cloud Computing Costs for Professional Services Businesses

Cloud services are far more affordable than you may think, with no costs upfront, and various payment models including a standard monthly fee, per-user costs and even a usage cost model. Ultimately, moving to cloud services has plenty of opportunity for long-term savings. With cloud hosted services, your Professional Services business will save money by reducing your IT staff, energy consumption, and hardware maintenance costs. You’ll also benefit from the extra space gained by removing the hardware associated!

Your cloud computing solution costs will be based upon the cloud provider and services you’ll require. With careful planning and a clear understanding of how much data you will need, and your reasons for switching to the cloud, you’ll be able to find the right solution for your business needs. Do take advantage of the various online calculators provided by cloud computing providers that you can use to determine your company’s expected costs. With the right information, you can make further savings on the Cloud services you require, from your preferred vendor.

While Cloud computing can have additional costs including data transfer fees, data retrievals and egress, static resource management habits, over-provisioning, and workload and resource mismatches, if you factor these into your long-term Cloud implementation strategy, you can still see overall savings. With the right information, you can make further savings on the Cloud services you require, from your preferred vendor.

If you’d like to know more about the services solutions and savings of migrating to the Cloud, we’re happy to advise.

Get in touch with our cloud strategists at Blue Saffron, and start your cloud journey.