Cloud is the IT of the future, and it’s here now. If you’re still hesitating about using cloud, try it out on one of these use cases. Once you experience the benefits of IT on demand, you’ll see why you should use cloud as the foundation of all your IT technology.

1. Big data analytics

Companies are finding competitive advantages through big data analytics. The ability to apply machine learning and statistical methods to large data sets can provide insights that identify new products or new ways of providing service. But all that data requires a lot of space to store and computing power to crunch. Cloud is ideal for meeting those space and CPU demands, and you can shut down the resources when the analytics project is done. There’s no large capital expenditure before the project starts and no costly resources sitting idle after it finishes.

2. Test and development environments

Building new applications requires giving developers and test teams environments that closely mirror production, but those environments aren’t needed after the development work is done. Cloud lets you create test and development environments with all the tools and capacity developers and QA teams need to get their jobs done and then turn them off once the application is deployed to production. Your development work will get done faster—no more delays due to provisioning environments—and you’ll save money, too.

3. Virtual desktop infrastructure

Cloud is accessible from anywhere, so cloud is ideal for deploying your virtual desktop infrastructure.

4. Email

Email is one of those applications that’s almost invisible. You don’t realize how much you depend on it until it goes down. Because the cloud makes high availability easy, using cloud for email provides a big benefit to your business.

5. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)

If you aren’t ready to use cloud to support your daily production systems, consider using cloud as a replacement for your disaster recovery systems. DRaaS lets you backup your servers to cloud and automates the recovery process. It’s a cost-effective, streamlined disaster recovery solution. Backup as a Service doesn’t provide the recovery support of DRaaS but is another good way of testing out cloud capabilities.

6. Web services

Using the cloud to host your web services gives you access to load balancing and the ability to scale to support peak demand periods. Content Delivery Networks help ensure your cloud-based websites deliver strong performance.

7. Proofs of concept

If there’s a new technology you’ve wanted to try, cloud offers the opportunity to test it out without investing significant resources. You can also use cloud servers to test demand for your own product, avoiding investments in resources to support applications that don’t succeed in the market.

If there’s a new technology you’ve wanted to try, cloud offers the opportunity to test it out without investing significant resources. You can also use cloud servers to test demand for your own product, avoiding investments in resources to support applications that don’t succeed in the market.

Whatever use case is motivating your switch to cloud, Prescient Solutions can help you succeed. Our IT consultants provide support and managed services to businesses in Chicago and Schaumburg. As a Microsoft Partner, we have deep expertise in Azure cloud and can help you apply it to solve any of your business needs. Contact us to get started with cloud now.