If you are planning to invest in cloud storage as an upgraded investment for your business operations, then you are not alone in this situation. Cloud storage has recently become very popular to a lot of businesses from startups to large corporations and global brands.
With different kinds of platforms, there are a lot of advantages and disadvantages that you must consider so that you can determine the best match for your business’ IT infrastructure. To help you with your decision in investing in cloud storage by hiring a cloud service provider, here are the most notable advantages and disadvantages that you must know courtesy of AS400 hosting.
Advantages
- Very accessible software solutions– Before, businesses must purchase and manage their own servers and computers for their software to function. This traditional way of managing and accessing your data and other important information requires a hefty financial investment in terms of purchasing equipment and also the human resources where only large corporations can usually afford, however, cloud hosting or computing can provide small businesses the access to the best software, platforms, and infrastructures available in the world today without any constrains on the location and without any requirements to purchase hardware.
- Very flexible and scalable– Because of cloud computing, it can help small companies to manage their increasing demand in the market because before, companies that have their on-premises systems must purchase their own server and their workstation upgrades to accommodate new users. If you are planning to expand your company by hiring new employees, you can easily add users into the service provider’s servers which is very scalable if you use cloud computing where you can scale everything from the bandwidth all the way to processing the power.
- Automation of business operations– An automated business operation is one effective way to grow and make your business progress and this can be done nowadays through cloud computing which is now available for smaller businesses. Automation is a very crucial step for a lot of small businesses to smoothen and speed up their business operations to increase their output at the same time cutting unnecessary costs.
Disadvantages
- Highly dependent on network connection– In order to get the benefits of cloud hosting for your business, you should always have an internet connection, and it is not all the time that you get an internet connection. You are required to have a network for you to send and receive files through the cloud server.
- It has limited features– You must set your expectations when it comes to getting the features in your cloud service provider because it will be limiting you for storage, backup, and computing only. You are required to work with a service provider that can offer you with the value of its unlimited bandwidth. You can also experience limited storage space and limited accessibility.
- You have no full control– Essentially, if you entrusted your confidential data to a third-party service provider, you are giving them the control in maintaining your data centers and your servers with the same amount of care as you would, however, they have a lot of clients that have the same sentiment as you. It is very unnerving to know that you do not have full control of your business’ data as you are forced to comply with its security and policies strictly.
