You’ve likely heard about cloud computing and cloud integration for businesses. Businesses are eager to adopt this technology, and that trend isn’t slowing down. According to Gartner research, over half of all IT spending will move to the cloud by 2025
However, understanding the nuances of cloud integration, along with the benefits it offers, can be somewhat confusing for business owners.
Cloud integration is the key for businesses that want to lower costs, be faster in the market, and improve customer experience.
This means that understanding cloud integration is critical for businesses that want to leverage the latest innovations to help them gain a competitive edge in a fast-changing marketplace.
Below, we’ll outline what business owners need to know about cloud integration and how it can help you reduce your costs, scale faster, and grow revenue.
What Is Cloud Integration?
Cloud integration is an enterprise-level solution that allows businesses to seamlessly connect their existing services and data with cloud infrastructure and systems.
For example, let’s assume a business is currently using an on-premise software program for its accounting. However, they need that legacy system to connect with a cloud customer relationship management (CRM) tool.
A successful cloud integration would integrate the business’s on-premise accounting data with the cloud-based CRM software. This eliminates the need for data entry or importing data, which increases efficiency, reduces costs, and minimizes errors.
Another cloud integration solution would be fully migrating the business’s on-premise software solution to the cloud. This means the software would now run on cloud infrastructure.
When operating in the cloud, the business saves money on server and local infrastructure costs. Performance, security, and responsiveness are also improved due to the enterprise-level support inherent in cloud environments.
In short, cloud integrations help to connect your existing systems with newer cloud technology. It also helps you migrate from local software applications and services to the cloud to reduce your IT costs.
Benefits of Cloud Integration
Moving your business applications to the cloud sounds great, but you may be wondering what the tangible benefits are. Below, we’ll go over the key benefits of this technology and why businesses of all sizes are taking advantage of it.
Scalability
Every business wants to grow and expand. However, every business owner also understands that growth and expansion can lead to increased costs that erode profits.
The key to maximizing revenue growth during expansion is to reduce costs, and that’s what cloud integration helps to achieve.
For example, if your business needs to quickly scale up its IT infrastructure during an expansion, you are often left with excess overhead after the expansion. You may have hardware and employees that you no longer need.
When you migrate to the cloud, you can easily scale your infrastructure when needed and then just as easily reduce it without any ongoing legacy costs.
A cloud environment can be “right-sized” to whatever your business needs right now.
Be More Agile
Today, businesses need to quickly adopt new technology to keep pace with the competition. When using on-premise software and on-premise IT infrastructure, implementing new technology can be difficult and expensive.
You first need to identify what you need and procure it. Next, you likely need to hire new IT talent to implement and manage the new technology. In a tight labor market, this can be very costly.
However, in the cloud, integrating new technology can be as simple as subscribing to a new service. The cloud environment will procure the needed server space resources for you, and the service will be managed and kept secure by experts.
All you need to do is take advantage of the benefits of the new service to grow your business or better service your customers.
Besides the cost savings, the implementation time is also considerably faster when software is deployed and managed in the cloud.
Reduced Downtime And Simplified IT Infracturuce
IT budgets can represent a significant portion of a business’s total expenses. However, reducing your IT budget can be a recipe for disaster in a fast-paced technological environment.
Cloud integration solves this dilemma by allowing your business to improve its IT infrastructure and performance while simplifying and reducing your overall IT budget.
Cloud environments take advantage of economies of scale to offer services far cheaper than you can provide them locally. Even a partial move to the cloud can immediately create savings for businesses struggling with IT costs and performance.
How Do I Migrate My Business To The Cloud?
Migrating to the cloud can be easy when you have a trusted technology partner to help guide the way.
At Robust Network Solutions, we specialize in helping businesses migrate their IT infrastructure and software to the cloud.
Our cloud experts can analyze your current business software and infrastructure and create a plan to seamlessly move your systems into the cloud.
From there, we manage tasks such as security patches, updates, server procurement, and more. This frees up your business resources to pursue growth opportunities and gives you the confidence to implement new business technology without the fear of high maintenance costs.
Our goal is to always save our customers money over their current IT spending while allowing them to experience improved performance, enhanced security, and less downtime.
Learn More About Cloud Integration
If your current IT budget and performance are becoming a drain on your business and preventing you from effectively scaling, contact Robust Network Solutions.
We offer full cloud migration and integration services to boost efficiency and reduce your technology costs. Once implemented, our ongoing management of your cloud systems will allow your business to focus on growth and not expensive IT management.
Contact Robust Network Solutions today to learn more about our cloud services for business and how they can help your business gain an edge in a highly competitive marketplace.