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To thrive in a rapidly changing business landscape, small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) should consider replacing outdated technology solutions with more robust digital tools to keep up with the growing competition, maintain productivity, and stay relevant to clients. In addition, these tools can help SMEs in not only meeting but exceeding their target audience's expectations with outstanding experiences. The process of replacing outdated tech solutions with new, cost-effective cloud-based solutions and other technologies is known as digital transformation.

There are many reasons SMEs are choosing cloud-based solutions over traditional ways of data storage and computing. Just like other technology trends, the benefits of cloud-based solutions far outweigh the limitations. In this article, we explore the five ways cloud computing is transforming SMEs.

1. Cost optimization

The most significant benefit of a cloud-based solution is operational cost optimization. Moving to a cloud platform means you will install less IT equipment and incur lower maintenance costs. While I wouldn't recommend that SMEs eschew their IT teams altogether, the increasing demands on those teams are far lighter if you shift most of your operations to the cloud. Indeed, the cloud serves as a cost-effective way to accommodate surges in transactions or business operations that may incapacitate traditional systems.

You no longer need to make significant capital investments to purchase, upgrade, and maintain prohibitively expensive servers, computers, and their related software or hardware, for starters. Over the long term, cloud-based solutions offer significant operational cost certainty because the service providers are responsible for the system's security, maintenance, and upgrades.

2. Data security

Data breaches and cyber-attacks can happen to any organization operating within nearly any industry. However, with 28 percent of data breaches in 2020 involved small and mid-sized businesses, owners and managers must be more proactive in protecting data and their digital presence. This not only ensures data safety, but robust data security is one of the tools you can use to attract and retain new customers.

With cloud-based solutions, both providers and users have access to technologies and tools to insert barriers between the access and visibility of sensitive business data. For instance, encryption helps scramble your data so that it's only readable if you have the encryption key. In addition, most cloud-based service providers are constantly developing stronger encryption solutions, researching new threats, and monitoring for potential intrusions into their cloud systems. These measures are all meant to fortify your data security.

3. Automated disaster recovery

Control is an essential factor that contributes to the success of any business. But no matter how in control your business maybe when it comes to its internal processes, there are things that may be out of its control. And in today's changing corporate landscape, even a short period of unproductive downtime can result in a resoundingly negative impact. Indeed, downtime in your operations could scathe your brand reputation, lead to low productivity, and cost you money.

Company continuity has traditionally been anchored on maintaining disaster recovery sites that accurately replicate roadmaps but often result in gaps in cyber resiliency and unnecessary delays in shifting workloads and data. While there may not be an accurate way to anticipate and prevent disasters that could harm your business, there's one thing you can do to speed up your recovery; switch to cloud-based solutions.

Cloud computing models for disaster recovery enable per-application disaster recovery, ensure cyber resiliency, and allow resiliency orchestration that offers tailored responsiveness depending on an organization's need of applications. Indeed, cloud-based solutions offer quick data recovery for virtually all types of emergency scenarios, from power outages to natural disasters.

4. Remote work and better collaboration

According to Gartner, 74 percent of CFOs intend to permanently move 5 percent of their workers to remote positions. Thus, although the pandemic may have accelerated the remote work culture, most organizations, including SMEs, now realize how beneficial it can be for operational efficiency. For this reason, there has been a significant rise in cloud computing for remote employees globally.

Cloud-based solutions make it easy for remote workers to connect and collaborate with other teams. With information access on the go, SMEs and established corporations are witnessing a paradigm shift in their operational efficiencies. The cloud acts as support that ensures timely and safe access to information, and it has made remote working possible for everyone. You no longer need to wait for hours or weeks before the IT department can deliver the required data.

5. Drive enterprise innovations

What if your business had an ace up its sleeves that optimizes costs, makes clients happy, improves operational efficiency, creates new sources of revenue, and reaches new markets? A recent study by IBM Institute for Business Value revealed that cloud-based solutions deliver actual business value to SMEs and organizations across different industries. This study found that cloud-based solutions empower SMEs to;

• Expand service or product features while ensuring ease-of-use
• Roll out sophisticated client journeys tailored to unique client experiences
• Reach new clients
• Rapidly prototype, develop, and deploy services and products
• Gain easy entry to a new market or industry

About half a decade ago, most companies were shifting to cloud computing to cut operational expenses and streamline their IT infrastructure. Today, your enterprise risks being outflanked by competition if you're not unleashing the power of cloud-based solutions to drive enterprise innovation.

6. Scalability

Scalability refers to either increasing or decreasing IT resources required to meet changing demands in your organization. It is one of the hallmarks of cloud computing and the driving force of its booming popularity with SMEs.

Data storage capacity, networking, and processing power can all be scaled using the existing cloud computing infrastructure. Indeed, it can be done quickly, typically with minimal or no downtime or disruption.

Summary

In reality, I think fewer people want to talk endlessly about IT systems, weaknesses, strengths, risks, and opportunities. Instead, business owners and managers want to dedicate themselves to their core responsibilities, which is why they need solutions that combine flexibility and security while ensuring higher operational efficiency and driving enterprise innovations. With cloud-based solutions, SMEs can achieve these objectives.

ANP provides a set of cloud-based solutions focused on building high-end IT infrastructures for SMEs and other categories of business organizations. We focus on creating infrastructure that’s easy-to-use, secure, and scalable.