Image from: Victor Habbick / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When the IT infrastructure of an office has its basis in the cloud over the internet, there are many advantages.

Data and web management improve tremendously, along with increases in productivity, when a system moves from traditional methods to the private cloud.

Remote Access

A major advantage of implementing a cloud-based infrastructure is that employees and partners are able to access the centralized information from remote locations.

While one company has its basis in one office, another business may have locations spread across the country or around the world. Employees may travel as well. When locations are widespread, data is reachable in the centralized cloud location using the simple requirements of an internet connection and permission to view the files.

This approach to server utilization is already the corner stone for up coming operating systems. Most notably Windows Server 2012 is a remote access server that allows site-to-site gateways. Information cab be shared between remote office locations and other sites that authorized uses allow access to the private cloud.

Meet Data Demands

Turning the office into a cloud is also an cost effective and efficient way to manage data between office locations. The IT infrastructure in a cloud environment can employ Cloud Bursting or the method of balancing out energy demands during peak computing times. Cloud bursting is also a technique that is used to great effect with websites that utilises “cloud server hosting”.

When data capacity increases during busy periods at the company, Cloud Bursting moves the excess data across the cloud to a provider network to handle the extra data requirements. In turn, the network moves efficiently and problems such as system failure due to a busy computing environment are avoided. There is also an added benefit that due to the “pay as you go” model for cloud based servers companies are only paying for the resources in which they are consuming – thus is periods of low data transfer there is the potential for savings. A similar load balancing method is used for cloud hosting whereby bandwidth and I/O data is managed automatically to control influx and subsiding data requirements.

Easy Maintenance of Software

Another benefit of a company move to a cloud-based IT infrastructure is the improvement in standardisation of company software. Office productivity suites, CRM software, email clients, even database management systems can all run within a cloud infrastructure reducing the reliance of software actually being installed on local machines and allowing for cross device access not just to files but potentially business critical software.

Google Docs, for example, is a suite of products that users store and access entirely in the cloud. Documents, spreadsheets and other file types exist in the cloud. Any edits and shares of the data occur in the cloud as well. Similarly infamous cloud based CRM service Salesforce allows users to access to its powerful toolset through a variety of browsers and devices with the only caveat being the requirement of an internet connection.

The private cloud enables faster and more efficient communication between employees and partners. Collaboration is encouraged irrespective of location, data is managed according to demand and IT environments are standardised and updated seamlessly. In short the cloud is the perfect business environment for efficiency.

This article was created on behalf of ElasticHosts who offer cloud based server solutions – from linux cloud servers to cloud compting infrastructures.