A cloud solution offers many benefits

The benefits of cloud solutions are many, and as the world is becoming ever more digital, with the sheer number of business applications, SaaS solutions and business platforms now available to the average business user, at a level unthought of just five years ago this is becoming clear.

And in many businesses ensuring all these solutions operate as they should and everyone is kept happy will be the responsibility of the IT technicians.

But to make things easier, a growing number of organisations are now switching to cloud computing and outsourcing the overall management to a managed service provider (MSP). It takes away the pain of day-to-day issues and allows more strategic activity to be undertaken by the in-house team.

So how does switching to cloud computing and MSP management improve the user experience?

Most organisational IT becomes a mismatch of technologies, systems, applications and process issues. This requires the on-site IT team to try to manage ongoing helpdesk tickets, hardware failures, security issues, technology compatibility, managing shadow IT etc., with multiple issues often combining to create poor user experiences and a general negativity around the IT function.

Many of the problems and poor user experience is often traced to this mismatch, which is usually the result of a business’s general lack of direction around IT or inertia, with perhaps a sprinkling of the fear of change.

If you take this mix over several years you can start to see and appreciate how these issues can paralyse an organisation.

The movement to cloud computing, whilst not a panacea, can address several of the issues highlighted, removing the piecemeal approach to updates, upgrades and hardware renewals and significantly improving the user experience.

The move to the cloud also offers a range of additional benefits:

Streamlined design – Many of today’s workers are digital citizens who have grown up in an era of always-on, on-demand mobile services, all tailored to deliver a high quality user experience.

Expecting the best of these individuals, when they are faced with unwieldy legacy IT, with its mongrel amalgamation of outdated operating systems, software and hardware, is optimistic in the extreme. It is unlikely to deliver the modern, consumer-grade experience to which they are accustomed.

However, switching to the cloud can help deliver the kind of intuitive, mobile-optimised user experience that earns employee loyalty and helps keep people productive.

Reduced complexity – Unnecessary complexity is one of the enemies of great user experience, and legacy IT is often absurdly complex.

Modern cloud solutions allow organisations to reduce or mitigate this complexity by allowing users to interact with systems without requiring any advanced technical knowledge. This will also significantly reduce the costs and time spent on training, which frees up the IT team to work on higher-value projects.

Greater flexibility – Today’s employees want the freedom that mobile offers and a cloud solution allows them to leave behind the ties of location, i.e., having to remain on-premise simply because that’s where all the required infrastructure is housed.

Given the increasing trend for workplace mobility and remote working, migrating to the cloud will play an essential role in helping organisations align their working practices with modern worker preferences. Many employees can now get their job done from anywhere, anytime, with any device.

Easier collaboration – Innovation and collaboration have always been driving forces for growth, yet now technology is making it even easier to get the collaborative juices flowing.

Moving to the cloud enables an organisation’s people to access, share and edit documents securely from anywhere, whilst communicating across a range of channels.

Collaboration through technology allows updates to happen in real-time, which ensures work is completed more quickly and everyone involved can be reached more easily when their input is required.

The cloud helps deliver a new world of collaboration beyond the office door and office hours – creativity doesn’t work 9-5, so make it easier for people to seize the moment together and enjoy the creative process.

Easier updates – One of the more mundane, but equally important aspects of the cloud is its ability to resolve the pain caused by the need for frequent updates on older, less agile systems.

In the cloud, necessary updates occur automatically, freeing up the time of the IT team to focus on more important tasks, likely to have a positive impact on the bottom line. The cloud will reduce (or even eliminate) the worry of obsolete applications, conflicts and general maintenance headaches.

Easier recovery – Given the increasing threat of cyber-crime, good security hygiene is more important than ever, but a challenge for even the most diligent user.

Moving to the cloud helps reduce security risk. Backup data is stored on offsite servers, sensitive data can be deleted remotely and managing credentials become much simpler. And if disaster strikes, natural or man-made, the appropriate cloud solution will help businesses recover lost data.

Business continuity – Finally we must address downtime; frustrating for employees and a potential disaster for any business with deadlines to meet. Moving to a cloud provider with offsite servers, the risk of downtime is reduced, and workers can avoid dealing with annoying outages.

The answer doesn’t have to be cloud

Whilst cloud can deliver a host of benefits, some of which we have outlined above, the right solution is different for every organisation and it might be on-premise, cloud, multi-cloud or a hybrid mix of all these options.

The difference is understanding where you are now, where you need to be and the best way to get there, which may not be the easiest solution for us to implement or for you to choose – it’s just about making the right decisions and the seeing how best to achieve the desired outcomes.

And that’s where a conversation with Quiss is different because we’re all about you and what’s right for your organisation, whatever that might look like. Get in touch today and think differently about the cloud.