There’s never enough money in the budget to do everything you want with technology; that’s why it’s so important to get as much value as you can for the money you do have. Cloud offers a fantastic approach to computing that gives you tremendous value for your spending:

1. Cloud reduces or eliminates spending on hardware and software.

There’s no IT department without hardware and software, and those expenses really add up.

When you buy hardware, you probably buy excess capacity to ensure you have it available in the future when you need it—attempting to obtain it when the demand actually materializes will take too long. In addition to the actual cost of the equipment, you also pay to rent the space where it sits and the electricity that turns it on.

When you buy software, you don’t just buy the licenses you need now; you also buy a maintenance contract to provide you support in case of problems. When employees leave, you’re left with excess licenses that can be difficult to reassign to other employees and servers.

With cloud, those spending challenges go away. You don’t need to buy excess capacity in advance; it’s available when you need it. Similarly, you pay only for the software you need, via a subscription model. If you no longer need a software product, there are no longer any costs. Plus, capital expenditures are turned into operational expenses, which gives you much more flexibility in managing your funds.

2. Cloud reduces IT staffing requirements.

Running your own data center is time consuming. Staff is occupied with daily maintenance tasks and fighting the million small fires that happen every day. With all those distractions, it’s difficult to assign staff to look at the bigger, long-term picture and find better ways to leverage technology to benefit your business.

When you use cloud, many of those routine operations taking up your staff’s time disappear. Routine functions such as applying patches and dealing with hardware failures are handled by the cloud provider’s team, not yours. That means your team can stop fighting fires and start spending time on special projects that truly add value.

3. Cloud reduces application development and deployment costs.

If development costs are among your biggest IT challenges, cloud offers cost savings here, too. Cloud provides developers with numerous tools, libraries, and frameworks that speed development. Cloud makes testing more cost effective, because you only need to pay for the test environment active while testing is going on. Getting your application into production is fast, too, with tools that support continuous development.

Start using Microsoft Azure Cloud to start enjoying the cost advantages of cloud technology. Contact Prescient Solutions to get your cloud infrastructure up and running.