Simply put, the cloud is the delivery of computing services—servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and more—over the Internet (“the cloud”). Cloud computing is a big shift from the traditional way businesses think about IT resources. What is it about cloud computing? Why is cloud computing so popular?

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    Uses of the cloud

    You’re probably using cloud computing right now, even if you don’t realize it. If you use an online service to send email, edit documents, watch movies or TV, listen to music, play games, or store pictures and other files, it’s likely that cloud computing is making it all possible behind the scenes. The first cloud computing services are barely a decade old, but already a variety of organizations—from tiny startups to global corporations, government agencies to non-profits—are embracing the technology for all sorts of reasons. Here are a few of the things you can do with the cloud:

    • Create new apps and services
    • Store, back up, and recover data
    • Host websites and blogs
    • Stream audio and video
    • Deliver software on demand
    • Analyze data for patterns and make predictions

     Grow your business, not your budget, with flexible cloud solutions that save you money

    With the fast pace of innovation constantly accelerating, it’s becoming increasingly expensive to keep investing in the latest and greatest IT solutions. At the same time, relying on older solutions while your competitors invest in new ones gives them a leg up on you to anticipate, manage, and respond more quickly to change.

    By turning to Microsoft Azure and the cloud, you can keep your competitive edge without expanding your budget. The cloud helps you bring products and services to market quickly. You can instantly scale globally, with everything needed to support worldwide business growth. You can run your operations more cost-effectively, paying only for what you use as opposed to for what you don’t. You can also free up your budget to spend on other business needs by eliminating the cost of new hardware. And you can gain enterprise-level security with the same data protection and datacenter security that many of the world’s largest organizations receive today.

    Why are small business’s moving to the cloud?

    1. Cost Savings

    You want to focus on running your business, not your infrastructure and the bottom line. With the cloud, you can build, deploy, and manage applications in the cloud without worrying about the cost of purchasing new server hardware. You can easily scale up or down as needed and gain peace of mind knowing you have the added protection of multiple data backups in managed datacenters.

    2. Speed

    Most cloud computing services are provided self service and on demand, so even vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.

    3. Reliability

    Many businesses lose critical data because they don’t have a data backup solution. The cloud offers simple, reliable backup for your data and applications that’s affordable because you pay only for the storage you use. There are no typical infrastructure costs or per-server or data transfer fees. Plus your applications receive the same level of protection that Microsoft enterprise customers, including many of the world’s largest financial institutions, receive.

    4. Productivity

    On-site datacenters typically require a lot of “racking and stacking”—hardware set up, software patching, and other time-consuming IT management chores. Cloud computing removes the need for many of these tasks, so IT teams can spend time on achieving more important business goals.

    5. Easy Website Hosting

    Any business can host its own website, but is the risk of poor performance, security breaches, and skyrocketing costs worth the price? With Microsoft’s Azure, you can quickly and easily host scalable websites in the cloud. Microsoft uses multiple datacenters around the world, helping provide you and your customers with a reliable, satisfying, and secure experience that enables you to deploy your applications close to your customers.

    Download the cloud 101 infographic!

      Why Partner With Bauen Solutions?

      At Bauen Solutions we focus on the unique needs of small to midsize businesses. In addition to being Silver Microsoft Partner Certified, we understand the challenges businesses face when growing out of old technologies and specialize in finding new solutions to increase your efficiency and profitability.  Our small business IT specialist have years of experience helping company’s like yours overcome these difficulties and other IT issues that small and midsize businesses may encounter. We focus on building relationships with our clients to better understand your IT and business challenges and find the right solutions to get you to the next level.