Iagon Use Cases: SMEs and cloud services

Small businesses, big dreams. Can Iagon help making them come true?

💡 This article is reprinted here from Iagon corporate blog.

Running a business was never easy. Even more so nowadays, in times of fast-paced markets, ever-changing demand, and uncertain future. Business owners have to keep up and adapt to the changes. One of the possible tactics for alleviating the pains of starting up a small or medium-sized enterprise is adopting cloud services. But even though it seems like an easy fix and a cost-effective or time-efficient way of taking a business to another level, entrepreneurs have to face some challenges along the way. What kind of problems must be considered, and can Iagon solve them in any way?

The global pandemic was a real game-changer as far as the evolution of the modern work environment is concerned. It turned out that remote working remotely does not have a negative impact on employees’ productivity as long as they are equipped with proper tools. From shared calendars and documents stored online to virtual workspaces, even the most basic cloud tools make it easier for a team to co-operate.

However, the transition seemed much easier for large companies with their IT infrastructures, financial resources, and digital culture. It was not that easy for SMEs where the awareness of cloud services potential is lower. What should small and medium-sized enterprise owners bear in mind when embracing the cloud?

PROBLEMS?

Costs

Switching to cloud services is cost-effective. Companies do not have to spend money on costly IT hardware and software licenses. All they need to provide for an employee is a computer and internet access. Still, sometimes they fall into the trap of not investing enough and end up somewhat limited by the small scope of services. Or they invest too much and waste their funds on services they don’t really need. Some cloud service providers lack flexibility and tend to offer unalterable packages, obliging the customer to pay for storage and computing. But what if the customer only requires one of those services?

Security and Data safety

As information is currently one of the most valuable resources, SMEs have to care about the safety of their data. Is it safe to keep data on-site site? What if someone breaks in and steals the hardware along with the drives containing valuable information. What about fires, floods, and other natural disasters? Cloud storage seems to be the obvious answer but is it perfectly safe? Surely, you’ve heard about attacks on cloud storage giants that resulted in serious data leaks. Some large companies that deal with confidential information on an everyday basis strictly forbid the use of external storage as they don’t consider such solutions to be secure. Losing private and confidential data belonging to an important client can be disastrous for a small or medium-sized company. A business owner has to carefully think about who has access to such data and where the files are stored physically. In some cases, it’s not possible to store data in particular jurisdictions, e.g. outside the UK or EU. Furthermore, companies are bound to comply with data privacy regulations like the GDPR and other regulatory acts.

Implementation and Maintenance

It’s worth noting not all cloud solutions are easy to implement. How many changes have to be introduced before an SME can reap the benefits of cloud adoption? Will they require serious expenses or time-consuming employee training? In certain cases, a company might have to purchase certain equipment. Sometimes a particular version of software is obligatory, but what if it requires up-to-date hardware? All that circles back to one dreaded word — costs.

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