For many companies, especially small- and medium-sized businesses, building a comprehensive in-house IT infrastructure can be exceedingly complicated and prohibitively expensive.
For these companies, the advent of cloud computing has come as a boon. It enables them to access and leverage infrastructure and software solutions that previously would not have been realistically affordable, in a highly efficient way.
According to a recent Simply Business report, Software-as-a-Service, in particular, has much to offer businesses. The report outlined a number of key benefits offered by SaaS solutions, one of which was the cloud computing security that it affords.
The report noted that there has been concern in the IT industry about cloud computing security since the advent of SaaS. With new innovations in encryption measures, however, data vulnerabilities in the cloud are becoming a thing of the past. According to the report, cloud services "are now more secure than they have ever been."
Furthermore, some experts claim that cloud-based software solutions are often more secure than their conventional, on-premise counterparts, the report said. Spencer Parker, a representative of a cloud computing security firm, told Simply Business, "if I’m relying on my desktop antivirus to stop a virus, it’s still got to my desktop. But if I’ve got a cloud web SaaS solution, it’s been stopped before it can even get to my network.”
In addition to its security benefits, the report also mentioned a number of other benefits of cloud computing, including cost-efficiency, ease of deployment, simple maintenance and scalability.
Scalability, in particular, has driven many companies to the cloud. The report noted that, in the past, many businesses either expended valuable resources on additional infrastructure in case their businesses were to expand in the future, or found themselves in situations in which they needed to grow but lacked the infrastructure. The cloud resolves this problem by offering companies the ability to scale up or down their services quickly and easily, simply by increasing or decreasing the services to which they subscribe.
A growing number of companies are adopting cloud solutions. According to a recent Open Group report, approximately 92 percent of companies either have deployed cloud solutions already or intend to do so in the future.
