With continuing demand for flexible and efficient IT solutions, it isn’t surprising that lots of businesses are taking advantage of today’s high broadband connection speeds and switching over to the cloud.
Locally-hosted remote servers will one day be a thing of the past. Managing your data online is more efficient, widely-accessible, flexible, scalable and cost-effective. However, local servers do still have a place in some environments, so we always consider what is best for each client.
To take advantage of the many benefits of cloud computing, organisations don’t have to overhaul their entire infrastructure at once. In fact, for many businesses, it’s more appropriate to migrate their services selectively or gradually, while retaining their existing in-house arrangement. This is known as hybrid IT. A company may choose to go down this route if their internet connection is slow or unreliable, if they have recently invested in their local infrastructure, or if they are concerned about retraining their staff.
When it comes to hybrid IT, how much you use the cloud is entirely up to you. To begin with, you may just want to use a cloud-based email service or some specific software hosting solutions like Microsoft’s Office 365. The great thing about hybrid IT is that you can upscale and downscale your cloud computing needs as they develop and change, adopting more cloud solutions when dealing with seasonal spikes, for example.
In terms of security, hybrid IT allows you to choose which files are stored on your private servers and which ones are hosted online. This offers peace of mind when it comes to managing confidential or commercially-sensitive information. It’s worth noting that the majority of cloud services come with advanced security measures to protect your data, but if you’re uncomfortable hosting certain files off-site, it’s no problem.
If you think that your business can benefit from hybrid IT, we’ll be more than happy to discuss this with you, identify your requirements and come up with an appropriate strategy for your business. It may be necessary to make some improvements to your current network in order to ensure it can meet with the demands of hybrid IT, but since this migration can be gradual, so too can the cost. At any rate, you’ll be saving money on hardware in the long run.
Contact us today and see how we could help you with cloud computing.