10 Real-World Cloud Advantages For Business Applications

There’s no denying the cloud movement is in full swing at this point and both Software as a Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings make a lot of sense for most organizations.  However, there are additional considerations, capabilities, and opportunities to use the cloud that are less apparent to many companies during their migration and use of the cloud.

If you’ve invested in any application customizations or complete custom application development, Platform as a Service (PaaS) capabilities in the cloud create remarkable opportunities.  Services like App Service, Service Fabric, Azure Functions, and Cloud Services provide customers with a comprehensive PaaS application platform for building, deploying, and managing apps of all kinds, that would have been difficult, costly, or impossible on premises.

Let’s cut right to the chase and provide 10 examples how this may be able to help you:

1. Less IT Time Management and Cost: A recent study by Forrester Consulting commissioned by Microsoft (The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Azure Platform-As-A-Service) reported tremendous reductions in management time and improved time to market.

In the highlights of this study, one representative organization had:

• An 80% reduction in IT administration time required to manage apps deployed on the platform
• A 25-hour average reduction in development and testing time required to develop or update Azure PaaS applications
• A 50% reduction in time required to deploy a new application solution to a client

1. More than SaaS Offers:  SaaS solutions are great, but often times they only get you about 80% of what you need.  When you need more than what an out-of-the-box solution provides, Office 365 and Azure PaaS are incredible and cost-effective platforms to build custom applications. Don’t settle for the limitations of your existing software: customization options exist. It might not seem like much, but that extra 20% provides organizations with distinct competitive advantages required in today’s markets.
2. Less Software Licensing Costs:  Software licensing is expensive. By using Azure platform’s capabilities, your $25,000­ SQL Server License could instead cost as low as $70 per month. With this one platform, you eliminate costly licensing like SQL Server, Windows Servers, and other Microsoft development tools. If you use Windows Server Data Center edition to run in the cloud, you eliminate those additional license costs as well.
3. Greater Competitive Advantage: Utilizing a PaaS solution, your team can more quickly implement custom solutions for that extra competitive edge.

Examples include:

• Mobile-enable existing applications for teams within your organization
• Deliver real-time data and information right into the hands of your key folks and customers by integrating and connecting with other cloud apps/services
• Demonstrate to your customers that you can meet their increasing demand for technology, self-service, and information about your products, services, and their accounts.

You have a much greater toolset and far less overhead with PaaS and are therefore empowered to create these capabilities FASTER than your competition.

1. Less Upgrade Costs:  Make upgrading your software and platform simple, easy, and in many cases, seamless.
2. Greater Scalability:  Most people know you can scale up with cloud resources, but not as many also think about scaling down as well.  It’s costly to liquidate hardware or let sit idle locally, but applications require testing, staging environments, and development integration. When you don’t need these resources, you don’t pay for them.
3. Less Development Time:  Integrated tools and features for deployment, databases, workflow, directory integration, security, and APIs with other cloud services are already available.  Reduce the required 2-3 week wait in most large organizations for new development and test environment deployment.
4. No Geographic Limitations:  Cloud development, integration, test, and production environments allow distributed teams access to the same resources regardless of location and time of day.
5. Less SDLC Time:  Empower developers and testers to provision and decommission specific environmental needs without requiring infrastructure assistance.  Instead of maintaining those environments manually, push-button environment duplication allows for on-demand regression testing.
6. ROI:  While there may be upfront costs, taking advantage of these services absolutely saves time and money if setup and used correctly.  Invest now and measure the results for yourself.

When you shift to the cloud, think about these additional application-level opportunities to leverage for additional business advantages.  If you’re not, you can bet your competition is.  The additional capabilities for faster and less money allows organizations to offer better products, services, and pricing in a highly competitive market.

Reach out to us today to discuss how we can help deliver the competitive advantage your business needs.