Use Only What You Need, and Pay Only for What You use? It’s an Idea Whose Time has Come — Compliments of the Cloud!

Imagine a world where you use only what you need, and you pay only for what you use. It’s the epitome of efficiency and economy!  IT managers who have discovered the cloud know just how much sense this makes — and how impractical the alternative can be.

Case in point: Young newlyweds are eager to buy their first home. They plan to have a large family, but that’s down the line.  Now imagine that, because of these plans, they’re forced to buy a large, multi-room home as their first home purchase.  An apartment won’t work because where will you put the kids when they arrive?  Ridiculous, right?  Or, say you go to buy a car and as you’re signing the paperwork the salesman asks you how much gas you’re going to use over the lifetime of the car because that needs to be paid for up front?  Outrageous!  In both cases you’re locked in to an unrealistic and uneconomical arrangement.

For IT Managers running their own data management systems, it’s a startlingly familiar analogy. Buying new IT equipment requires them to look into a crystal ball, estimate what their capacity needs will be 3, 4, and 5 years into the future, and then buy that entire capacity NOW!  Then, what happens when markets shift, as they’re doing more rapidly than ever, requiring an entirely new approach by IT Managers?  This is where costs can get out of control, and efficiencies become less than optimal.

Now, if you’re an IT Manager, imagine having the freedom to buy only what you need and add more only when you need it?  No more long range forecasting in an unpredictable market.  No more getting to the end of your equipment’s lifecycle only to find you over bought and overpaid.  No more fire drills and emergency procurement processes when you find you under bought, for which the consequences to a business are harsh and expensive!  How sweet would it be to ditch that entire perilous process? That world doesn’t reside in some far-off Utopian enclave. It exists here, today, right now — in the cloud.

What makes scalability in the cloud so important to customers?  Again… You use only what you need, and you pay only for what you use! The prospect of spending untold amounts of money to continuously upgrade, repair and retrofit on-site servers is yielding to a new paradigm; in the cloud, IT management capabilities can be broadened or reduced depending upon a customer’s business needs. It lets IT managers adapt to seasonal changes in business, and it does so seamlessly. Scalability on the cloud also eliminates the need to predict future capacity requirements; should a customer demand more resources, they can be quickly added. At the same time, should business needs fluctuate, those resources can always be scaled back as warranted — thanks to the cloud’s scalability. And in terms of procuring resources, the cloud radically simplifies the process. The procurement process required forecasting, which frequently took months. With the cloud’s scalability, forecasting is virtually eliminated.

When businesses require more intensive capacity, the cloud allows for instantaneous adjustment — with the click of a mouse. Customers can also add users, applications, increase storage, and run applications locally or globally. They can do so with minimal effort, and for a fraction of the cost of traditional on-site server and data management software.

Scalability in the cloud changes everything when it comes to IT management. It’s an efficient, easy-to-integrate system that gives businesses a new and better way to manage their data. Today and tomorrow, the cloud represents a quantum leap into the next era of data management!

Use only what you need, and you pay only for what you use: It’s a brilliant concept whose time has come. And it’s all compliments of the cloud! Talk with an SIAS representative about the myriad advantages — including scalability — in the cloud. You’ll be surprised at how simple it is to embrace, how cost-effective it is, and what a difference it will make for your customers going forward!

If you learned anything or enjoyed reading this blog, please like it below and tune in next week when we’ll look at the Agility cloud can add to your business.