Thinking of moving your business to the Cloud?  Making the decision to move to the Cloud can cut costs, inspire innovation, and improve productivity and efficiency; all things that can propel a business ahead of its competition. But the bottom line is without the commitment and adoption from top management your thought may remain just that – a thought. A decision like this requires strong support and commitment from management. Your senior management team will want to see the value in the opportunity you’re presenting – they want to maximize capacity, retention and most importantly revenues. In other words they want to see the dollars.

The potential savings and associated costs are extremely important when creating a sound business case for the Cloud. The potential savings are clear. Without physical servers, hardware and software expenses are eliminated, as well as costs related to storage and facilities like power and HVAC are reduced. You may also see savings in your labor costs. Without the physical servers on premise you may need fewer technical support staff.

However there are many savings created by the added functionality of using a Cloud-based service provider that are often overlooked. These savings are difficult to quantify, but can be extremely influential in the decision making process. Here are five benefits I’ve identified that can have a major impact on your bottom line.

Agility

What impact would increasing customer satisfaction and retention have on your business? And what would more satisfied and empowered employees do to your productivity? Not sure how to quantify this benefit? Discuss it with other business units, they may be able to tell you the cost of acquiring a new customer; this number is sure to raise a few eyebrows.  Moving to the Cloud will offer the ability to change direction quickly and at a lower cost, meeting your customers’ needs faster.

Scalability

Excess capacity is wasted capacity, and wasted money. By eliminating excess capacity and moving to the Cloud or a hybrid solution you pay for what you use.  This is an extremely efficient solution for businesses with peak usage periods. You have the option to use your resources for your base capacity and leverage the Cloud for your peak usage.

Reliability

Eliminate the headache and the costs associated with developing and implementing a viable disaster recovery plan. A study conducted by Aberdeen Group suggests the biggest barrier to an enterprise implementing a disaster recovery plan is budget. However with the introduction of Cloud-based disaster recovery solutions businesses of any size can attain affordable security.

Innovation

With fewer outages, hardware & software acquisitions, and updates & configurations, your team will have more time to think innovatively and bring new products to the market. Entering the market earlier can have a major impact on your bottom line. Given the projected revenues of a new product, you can calculate the results of entering the market even a few weeks earlier than your competition.

Accessibility

What would giving your employees a single hour of work back each week do to your overall productivity? Cloud provides 24/7 access to all of the reports, information and applications they need to get their job done with fewer outages or system errors. With greater collaboration capabilities and automated services your employees can get more done. The potential increase in profit is a number senior management would love to see.

Savvy CIO’s are adopting more flexible solutions to free up valuable IT resources and improve company productivity and performance. I encourage you to consider these real benefits and savings – if you can quantify them, they will have an even larger impact in your business case.

Taking advantage of the latest technologies, automation and application management best practices, we’ve opened an advanced Data Center Facility in Canada. Navantis provides a collaborative approach to delivering exceptional integrated solutions, customized to fit your needs. Call us today to find out more about the steps, cost and value of the OnCloud experience or contact sales@navantis.com today!

This post was written by Terry Wiley
Terry, an IT Leader and visionary, brings more than 20 years of experience in the IT industry to the Navantis team. In his role as the Director of Cloud and Infrastructure Solutions at Navantis, Terry works closely with his team to develop innovative solutions to help clients navigate the complex cloud driven environment.