Five ways to save money through cloud computing

Jamie Riddell is chief executive officer of Suffolk-based Digital Tomorrow Today, a future-looking digital marketing consultancy. Jamie publishes a Directors’ Briefing to monthly premium subscribers covering the latest digital trends and how business can harness them today.

The Internet instead of on your computer

‘The Cloud’ simply refers to storage or processes that take place on servers accessed through the Internet instead of on your computer. A combination of much cheaper innovation and dynamic storage allows much more resource to be offered at a fraction of the price less than ten years ago.

Most businesses will never directly interface with the cloud instead, benefitting from low cost hosting, storage or services other companies can offer in the cloud. East Anglian Businesses will benefit by using services offered using the cloud at a fraction of the price.

Why? Because most of the services I would use are in the cloud, meaning I get the benefit of the services by accessing the internet, without the fixed cost of that entire infrastructure.

"The cloud" refers to storage or processes that take place on servers accessed through the internet instead of on your computer.

The cloud as well empowers the 'software as a service' model, which allows businesses to use services that would traditionally be delivered in a purchased software package.

The scenario I painted at the top of this article

The scenario I painted at the top of this article was typical of any growing business. The investment had to be made up front to acquire the infrastructure for a growing business. And, as research was expensive, it was often sensible to buy bigger than was required to ensure we had room for growth. From a financial and cash flow point of view this meant we were pursuant to this agreement utilizing our investment for many months or years earlier growth.

If we take file storage companies Dropbox and Box.com - both can offer online file storage and backup starting from free. With Dropbox you can store 2Gb of data earlier any charges kick in. Similar a business email account with multiple email addresses starts from free with Google Apps. So, two key costs of business startup or costs for existing businesses could be free using cloud based companies.

If you are running an organization there is a strong chance emails are an important communication channel. The 'old' way of managing company email was to invest in a Microsoft Exchange server or similar, buy a server to run it on and plug it in to the office. At that time, like as not add in another server to ensure the emails are stored and backed up and perhaps a firewall to decrease the amount of spam.

With the cloud a business can move all of those requirements online, allowing each user to connect to their emails directly on the Internet whenever they need. This doesn't mean you have to settle for a 'my business@hotmail.com' address. Companies including Google and Microsoft now offer competitive solutions to put all your corporate email in the cloud. With a little effort you can as well put your existing email into the cloud ensuring all the emails are backed up and in one place.

This ability to scale instantly helps businesses focus on growing or managing contraction with research that will always fit 'just right'.

Putting my business into the cloud makes it much easier to achieve collaborative working with colleagues and other services.

Salesforce, a leading global exponent of the cloud has created a complete platform to connect information and services at the same time. Force.com serves as base for any business to develop and host services that work at the same time through a common connection.

The cost of starting a cloud-based business is much lower than 'traditional' startups. From a innovation perspective we are seeing more companies start to deliver great services at low prices.

Dropbox, Box.com, Greplin, Mailchimp are all names that have been in existence for in accordance with 5 years, but they offer reliable services to empower our businesses. As the digital landscape changes rapidly, these companies will evolve in line with the landscape. Moreover the scalability and low costs mean you can swap providers if and when you need to, without losing money on annual contracts.

The cloud requires a broadband connection

The cloud requires a broadband connection, which is often contentious in East Anglia, however it doesn't require a huge connection. Speeds of 1mb to 2mb would be sufficient for all yet the biggest of tasks. Emails can work fine over 1mb connection or far less and the average file transfer will only take a few seconds on a similar connection.

The rise of the cloud has as well fuelled the mobile app revolution, with most of your apps storing data or using processes from the cloud, in other words than on your phone.