Cloud technology now touches on every aspect of a business, writes Brian Roe, CEO of Servecentric.
Cloud adoption in the enterprise space has reached maturity and while big budget cloud migrations have been the headline leaders, the business benefits that cloud computing has brought to the SME space are also game-changing.
Cloud’s low capital costs can benefit start-ups or smaller businesses experiencing growth periods, while providing reliable data access, streamlined processes, improved collaboration, and enhanced scalability.
“It is becoming increasingly evident that the best recipe for success for larger SMEs is a hybrid combination of cloud and self-owned infrastructure, driven by each company’s individual needs”
Cloud now touches every aspect of a business. Traditional communication and collaboration models have been overturned by the advent of cloud-based services such as Office 365 and other productivity suites, and the pandemic-accelerated adoption of video collaboration solutions including Zoom and Teams has changed the meeting landscape for good.
These out-of-the-box collaboration tools are well suited to the SME sector as they are cost-effective, easy to implement, and can be easily integrated with other applications. In this same vein, these types of tools have almost completely eradicated the complexity of managing on-premise email and communication services.
Flexibility for businesses
As well as overcoming complexities, cloud services provide greater flexibility that is difficult for SMEs to achieve with on-premise solutions, and significantly reduce the need for costly hardware purchase and maintenance.
Enabled by almost ubiquitous high-speed internet access, cloud tools offer other benefits such as reduced travel time and expenses for businesses, increased employee efficiency, and reduced IT administration.
While the benefits of cloud solutions are well documented, cloud repatriation projects (whether back to on-premise or to a private cloud) are also continuing to gather momentum.
Some businesses – particularly medium-sized businesses and enterprises – find that cloud-only strategies are failing to deliver the cost savings and efficiencies that they originally anticipated and, often, the total cost of ownership is increasing post-migration.
Additionally, a lack of control around security or reduced control in the event of diminished service performances and outages is driving this trend.
It is becoming increasingly evident that the best recipe for success for larger SMEs is a hybrid combination of cloud and self-owned infrastructure, driven by each company’s individual needs.
Protecting your business in the cloud
The success of any cloud strategy is also reliant on an effective security strategy, given the ever-increasing connectedness of cloud-based IT infrastructure across the globe. As well as increasing cyber risk for all businesses, regardless of their size or industry, traditional disruptive viruses have largely been replaced by targeted attacks such as distributed denial of service (DDoS), ransomware, and sophisticated phishing attacks.
It is imperative that every business takes steps to protect itself against such attacks through a combination of software tools, strong internal processes, data access controls, and ongoing employee awareness training. Ultimately, cloud providers are not responsible for data backups or cybersecurity, and the main risks still reside with end users in the organisation and their behaviours.
In line with this, it is essential that companies retain multiple data backups in separate locations, whether another cloud service or on-premise. A company’s ability to roll back from a ransomware attack, for example, can be the difference between continued success or ultimate failure.
AI and the cloud – a double-edged sword
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has taken cloud capabilities to a whole new level and will continue to drive innovation. To put AI usage into context, according to statistics published by the CSO, 18% of medium and 5% of small sized enterprises used AI technology in 2023. Leveraging AI for automating workflows or assisting in decision making were the most common uses. As more and more companies come to understand the value AI can bring to their businesses, there will be more real use cases for the SME space and usage will rise. In the near term, AI will likely have its greatest impact on software development services.
Although AI has been in use for many years, the arrival of large language models (LLMs) has completely changed the narrative in relation to AI and its potential to change every facet of the way we work. However, while AI is certainly a game changer, businesses need to continually test models and verify all data to ensure it can deliver real value.
While AI is undoubtedly enhancing capabilities for SMEs, on the other hand, it is also increasingly being leveraged by cyber criminals to exploit vulnerabilities in the cloud. As much as AI can be used for good, a range of tools can be used by bad actors to carry out automated cyber criminality, which underscores the need for proactive cybersecurity and data protection measures.
Same, but different
It’s important for SMEs to understand that cloud is simply the same software and data that they’re used to, but delivered slightly differently. Nevertheless, in order to capitalise on the potential of cloud and support business objectives, it’s vital for each individual company to ensure that their strategy is well thought out and that any risks are mitigated as far as possible.
Although there is a certain maturity to the cloud market and while we are still learning how to leverage its potential – particularly in the SME space – the sky’s the limit in the evolution of how we do business in the cloud.
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