Making the Jump to the Cloud: Four Things You Should Know

As someone who has worked for themselves, small practices, and large firms, moving to the cloud can be… iffy… at best. Seeing how moving to the cloud has affected multiple businesses has brought some neat realizations about it.

At first, the thought of moving to the cloud can be terrifying. It could scream privacy breach, lost documents, and everything nightmares are made of. Various businesses have felt similarly or were excited to start the process, each feeling differently based on their needs.

Moving to the cloud changes very little

There is a high chance that you’re already working with some type of cloud storage. If you’ve ever noticed that when you quit working on a document in an app, it automatically saves, and then you’re able to pull it up on your laptop… That is cloud storage at work.

Well, moving to the cloud affects very little, but can positively impact quite a bit. You’re given the ability to work on just about any project from anywhere. You can access the document from your laptop, phone, or tablet no matter where you are. This gives you the ability to do so even without having that particular app downloaded.

Unfortunately, this wonderful feature requires internet. If you’re in an area with no internet access or cell service, you won’t be able to access the needed files.

This fact is a small price to pay for the fact that you’ll never have to worry about leaving a thumb drive at your house again. Also, if accessing that particular document is of utmost importance, you can always save it locally to work on it without needing internet.

Data security is always a concern

It’s not so much your concern as it is the concern of the cloud provider. Think about it: if there is a huge data breach and people have sensitive documents that are placed in the wrong hands, that provider loses a ton of business.

Generally speaking, the locations that data is stored is secured and carefully monitored probably better than the servers in an office.

Security problems do arise from time to time and if there is something that is top-secret or super sensitive it might be best to store that particular document on a separate drive.

Just like any other newer technologies available, the cloud isn’t perfect.

Making the change

When working in a firm that is set in their ways of either hard copies of files or storing information locally on each computer, switching to a cloud storage system can be challenging. It’s not that finding documents is any more difficult, they just get moved.

Most people have experienced the corruption of a thumb drive or losing data because of a system outage. Sometimes, people accidentally delete needed data. While all of this can happen with cloud storage, it’s far less likely.

The systems self-heal so the corruption of data doesn’t really happen. And again, it’s nice to be able to locate and work on any piece of information you need from anywhere that has an internet connection.

In terms of cost…

If you are one of the decision makers and there are talks about the cloud and costs, keep in mind that many services will only lock you in for a year. Even then, it’s possible to break the contract and find another service you or the company likes better. Also, if you’re considering cloud storage for personal reasons, there are plenty of sites that offer it free or super cheap.

No matter what type of cloud service is chosen, it’s going to be cheaper than purchasing your own hardware, investing in on-premise software, and covering the cost to maintain it.

Luckily, you won’t have to make the choice on cost alone. Cloud storage services will allow you to ‘test drive’ their service to ensure it’s a good fit for you or your company. This fact alone is ideal because switching documents from one service to another is quite tedious.

To sum things up

Changing to the cloud lets you work on anything saved to it as long as there is internet access. As great at this fact is, it does require a proper connection. The other downside to being able to work anywhere means you might lose some of your work/life balance.

Data is about as secure as it’s going to get, nothing is perfect and the cloud isn’t the exception. With that said, services go to great lengths to ensure your information and documents are safe.

Cloud storage will take some time to adapt to for those that have stored their information locally, but will not be different for people who use cloud storage services on their phones. Finally, the cost isn’t prohibitive, contracts can be broken, and you can test the service out before you commit.

To put things simply, cloud storage makes life easier.