Why Should Small Businesses Use Cloud Computing?

Small and medium enterprises (SMB) have many benefits from moving their engineering operations to the cloud. In addition to improving flexibility and scalability to match IT resources to the needs of the business, migrating to the cloud can also save money by transitioning from the CAPEX model. (capital costs) to OPEX (operating expenses). Consistent and predictable costs of cloud service for small businesses helps to avoid going over budget, something that 60% IT decision makers admit to having suffered at some point.

However, for small and medium-sized businesses, cost is only one aspect of an effective public cloud solution. Any platform should be secure, easy to deploy and configure, and equipped with modern services like analytics and data storage. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) meets all of these requirements and more, making it a popular choice among SMBs as a primary or secondary cloud provider. Let's look at some of the benefits GCP can bring to today's SMBs.

Simple and affordable cloud service

Traditional On-premises IT systems are often very complex and expensive to manage. IT teams not only have to invest in infrastructure up front, but also bear the full responsibility of maintaining and operating the company's IT systems. This includes applying security updates and ensuring uptime and availability.

This issue poses significant challenges for SMBs. These businesses often have a limited number of employees and IT funds. Small and medium-sized businesses are less likely to increase their budgets every year than large businesses, and often spend a larger portion of their money on hardware.

Cloud services allow for a more manageable setup by shifting responsibility to the provider to handle a variety of mission-critical tasks. They also offer simpler cost management with on-demand pooling of resources with business usage billing. But the details of the payment plan make all the difference. GCP offers a pay-by-second feature that saves SMBs the hassle and expense of buying in advance without being able to predict their actual needs.

Comprehensive security to prevent data breaches

Migrating workloads and data from on-premises to the cloud creates real security challenges in managing data access and control. Only a third of IT decision makers feel confident about their ability to extend their security policies into the cloud.

At the same time, mistakes and vulnerabilities in cloud security will come at a heavy cost. A single data breach can affect sensitive records. Recovery often costs tens of thousands of dollars. Add to that the cost of reputational damage and a significant breach that would threaten the very existence of many SMBs.

To comfortably hand off something very important to a third party, SMBs need cloud security that is both robust and reliable. Here, GCP provides multi-layered security based on Google's own custom hardware. It also provides encryption by default to prevent unauthorized access and provide more peace of mind about overall security on the Cloud.

Intuitive look and feel of the SMB . environment

Small and medium businesses have unique requirements for their business software. Large enterprises need many different technologies and solutions. Meanwhile, SMEs often benefit from a lean environment. Here, preference is given to services that provide all the necessary functions with an easy-to-use interface and an affordable price point. So small business cloud services must offer the full range of capabilities and be easy to navigate and manage.

The popularity of Google Workspace customers between SMBs speaks to their ability to meet their unique needs. As of Alphabet's Q4 2018 earnings, there were more than 5 million paying customers for Google Workspace. Google Workspace is easy to use but packed with functionality. It provides an intuitive experience whether users need to add comments to documents in Google Drive or collaborate in real time via Hangouts Chat.

GCP moves this easy experience to the public cloud. SMB employees have an interface similar to the one they see every day in their inbox, calendar, spreadsheet, and cloud storage. This makes it easy to make the leap to GCP.