Advantages of Cloud Computing: 5 Benefits

Cloud computing empowers organizations of all sizes and industry verticals to focus their resources on product development and innovation while third-party cloud vendors take care of the infrastructure. The IT service is available at an affordable subscription-based pricing that allows organizations to get started with their first prototype build and testing, or scaling business into new markets in testing the success rates before committing resources over the long term. The advantages range from cost benefits to technology innovation and business process improvement to security improvements when done right. Here’s a list of five key benefits of cloud computing for your organization:

1. Cost Variability: Trading CapEx with OpEx

Organization operating on limited financial resources leverage cloud technologies to transition from a capital expense model to an operational expense pricing model. By sourcing IT services from the cloud, organizations can focus their investments on building HR capital, business growth, product development and improvements, marketing and customer support, among other expensive business needs. For a fast-growing organization, the cost component of IT infrastructure can grow exponentially. The expenses associated with deployment, management and security of a complex IT infrastructure can overwhelm and limit the agility of organizations in response to fast changing market requirement.

Organizations that heavily rely on IT infrastructure to power their business services also have to consider the hidden costs associated with running on premise data centers. For instance, failure to avoid data center downtime can lead to unprecedented financial losses, lawsuits and damages to the brand reputation. By leveraging cloud computing services however, vendors are committed to deliver reliable, secure and available services as per the SLA agreements. Developing the same capabilities in house may be beyond the financial limitations of most organization, and yet the cost of not employing these capabilities can potentially lead to business failure.

2. Optimizing DevOps

Cloud computing and DevOps are the two important interlinked components driving digital transformation in modern software organizations. DevOps dictates the process framework that employees follow individually and collectively, while cloud computing enables the necessary technology solutions. Without cloud computing, organizations must deploy and manage all necessary infrastructure on premise, invest in software licensing, take care of software updates and security. These limitations may force organizations to compromise their DevOps transformation goals and instead rely on traditional software development lifestyle practices by trading off the inherent benefits of DevOps such as faster product development lifecycles and agile business operations. Cloud computing is a paradigm that enables practices such as continuous integration, delivery, deployment and release, and cloud ensures on-demand availability of the tooling necessary to fulfil these DevOps processes.