Embracing opportunities in cloud

While the UK economy may be growing, the price of services and commodities remains high, impacting businesses of all sizes who are struggling to prioritise spend to fuel innovation. And with the energy price cap rising, businesses now have even less to play with.

In this tough economic climate, many businesses have turned to cloud solutions to solve these problems. According to the Cloud Industry Forum, all organisations are now accessing some form of cloud-based service, with the key drivers being its ability to offer more flexibility in IT spend, and to make them more agile in operations.

But are businesses making the most of cloud solutions to achieve these goals?

Outsourcing vs in-house

While a safe way to approach cloud might be bringing it in-house to ensure compliance through regulatory control, this is expensive to do and incredibly complex to manage without the right expertise. Implementing your own cloud solution means investing in your own servers, routers, networks and other devices required to manage your information – and ensuring you provision those materials for if your business scales. This is a complicated move that could reduce your cashflow in the long run.

A less risky, more cost-effective solution is outsourcing. Using cloud solutions created by experts removes the effort and risk that can arise from setting up and managing these solutions in-house. Businesses can also benefit from built-in security, with datacentres designed to routinely backup data in case disaster strikes – because it can be a nightmare to keep up with the malware to protect against today’s cyberattacks. What’s more, because you can easily scale usage up and down without having to upgrade or downgrade your products, outsourcing could save you money and business resource – two assets better used to help your business pivot to the next level by focusing on innovating your services.

Selecting the right environment

Each cloud model has its advantages. Private cloud offers increased security with resources dedicated to a single organisation, however it’s generally expensive. Public cloud is more cost-effective, coming in pay-as-you-go models and thus easier to scale. It’s also accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, however it’s nowhere near as secure. Hybrid cloud offers the best of both. It’s cost-efficient because you can use public cloud for less sensitive tasks, while keeping critical data stored in a private cloud for added security, and your data and applications can move between the two. Plus, by leveraging multiple environments you get enhanced disaster recovery if one fails.

Selecting the right cloud solution will help you maximise the opportunities it provides your business to ensure you get the right level of security and storage, without paying over the odds if you don’t need to. To help you decide, it’s important you factor in the industry verticals you serve, your route to market and your business goals in the short-, medium-, and long term to see which environment suits your objectives. Some cloud providers like PXC have specialist consultants to support businesses in making these decisions.

Knowing what you’re paying for

Businesses that have outsourced cloud environments may have come across ‘bill shock’. Where they’ve scaled up their cloud usage and suffered unexpected egress charges to quite large sums as a result. These charges, for some businesses, make cloud investments inviable, because the more successful or ‘used’ a cloud environment is, the more consumption you’re charged for – which for many defeats the point of switching to these solutions.

When it comes to choosing a provider, it's important to know what you’re paying for up front to avoid these unexpected costs. As a business, you can also do work in-house to ensure you only pay for what you need by analysing your current data, systems and information, alongside your business goals, before investing. By doing this you understand the space you need in the short, medium and long term, to avoid racking up costs scaling your solution later. You can also reduce the cloud space you need by going through your data and seeing what needs storing in these solutions, rather than using vital space (and money) on unnecessary or outdated information.

Avoiding threat

Recent security breaches that have impacted businesses worldwide have forced companies to review who they take their cloud solutions from, with some opting to move away from the hyperscalers. While these providers do offer robust, scalable storage solutions, there is a growing need for additional services to live within these environments such as proactive monitoring and maintenance, and improved security to protect critical business information. In today’s competitive market, critical business data cannot be put at risk and, while some hyperscalers do offer security solutions, they often aren’t as robust – and come at a cost.

To give your business the best chance of protecting against cyberthreat, it’s crucial to understand what cloud vendors are offering in this space before investing to get the best protection at a price that’s comfortable for your business.

Cloud for sustainability

Finally, eco-friendly initiatives are no stranger to the industry and are part of the reason why businesses are shifting to cloud-based sources to store data, with 78% of organisations planning to reach net zero in the next 2 decades. Cloud data centres are designed at scale and built for efficient energy to achieve optimal utilisation and temperature. They also offer reduced electricity usage than traditional data hardware systems, factors that will help your business on your journey to net zero.

A third of organisations have now realised the benefits of cloud for offering greater flexibility in IT spend and better business agility. By properly educating yourself on the solutions available you could enhance the opportunities provided to your business too.

Cloud at PXC

Our hybrid cloud solution gives you the best of both worlds. 1Cloud is a flexible, cost-effective and highly-scalable alternative to the hyperscalers that removes hefty egress fees so you always know what you’re paying for. What’s more, it’s privately connected to our network and built across two Tier 3 data centres for ultimate resilience.

Want control over your cloud solution? No problem. With 1Cloud we put our solution in your hands, while we manage the cashflow headaches in house.

With us you get:

• An affordable, reliable cloud solution that removes unexpected costs

• An application-agnostic solution that has built-in UC/voice environments

• Reliable support with specialist consultants to help curate the cloud environment for you

Talk to us about your cloud requirements and we can help you shift, today.

Find out more about our Cloud portfolio.