Cloud Computing Can Help Alleviate Your Business' Supply Chain Pains

We’ve all felt the pinch in some shape or form as the current supply chain disruptions have impacted the availability of products. We’ve all seen the barren retailers’ shelves, had to wait weeks for a computer or component to ship, and have winced at the rising price tags on many products. One aspect that has had a particular impact has been the shortage of computer microchips, and the many industries that are dependent on these chips for their operations.

These shifts have reignited an interest in the solutions that the cloud has to offer.

A BRIEF DISCLAIMER: While cloud-based services can certainly help with some business supply chain issues, they are not going to solve all of the current supply chain issues that may be impacting your business. Having said that, there are quite a few ways that cloud services may make some of your business’ current procurement challenges far more manageable—particularly based on what parts of your computing infrastructure you plan to migrate to the cloud.

So, as we go into this topic, please keep in mind that this is a very specific look at one part of a much larger, more nuanced problem.

Cloud Providers Were Largely Able to Sidestep the Chip Shortage

A lot of the major cloud providers had already made the investment into their infrastructures, meaning that they were largely unaffected by the lack of available hardware. This—along with an assortment of other reasons—has led to an uptick in the use of cloud services. In fact, Gartner estimates the public cloud spend for global end users to grow by 23% this year alone.

Cloud Services Come in a Few Different Shapes

When considering a move to the cloud, it is important that an organization weighs out its various options. There's the public cloud, the private cloud, and the hybrid cloud to consider. Each of these options come with their own pros and cons, so it comes down to your organization’s needs concerning its storage. If you’re primarily concerned about costs and don’t need to be concerned about sharing infrastructure with other organizations, public cloud is a decent option for you. If your use case has larger security concerns, private cloud may work better. If you need both, hybrid.

We can help you determine which cloud strategy best suits your needs, so don’t hesitate to reach out to us for assistance.

Of Course, Cloud Migrations Have More Considerations than Just What Type of Cloud to Use

Any cloud migration needs to also account for a variety of other concerns that businesses have to balance. For instance, security and compliance.

Security is a Critical Aspect to Account for with Cloud Solutions

Cyberattacks have only become more prevalent since the pandemic pushed workers out of the office and into remote operations. This means that you need to be sure that everything you have stored in the cloud—as well as your access to it—is sufficiently protected. Encrypting this data and ensuring that identity and access management are sufficiently configured are crucial steps that need to be taken when migrating to a cloud solution.

This only becomes more true when you also have to maintain compliance standards and their requirements.

We’re Here to Help You Get the Optimal Use out of Your Cloud Strategy

Our goal is to ensure that your cloud use performs just as well as (and even better than) an on-premise infrastructure. Reach out to us at (250) 483-5623 to find out what we can do for you.