Cloud services for Small and Medium Businesses

When we talk about cloud, it not just adopting technology but broadly about thinking of executing new methodologies to work more efficiently and improving our business by serving the customers in a more efficient way. The concept of cloud computing has become more popular among small and medium businesses, as more and more firms are realizing its importance in reducing the costs and managing IT complexities with ease. The technology solutions provided by cloud are enormous in terms of software, servers, infrastructure, platform etc where every component is provided as service instead of physically buying it. The conventional method of managing IT by buying software has turned into modern method of adopting them as service. This has provided added advantage to SMEs where they are able to afford and implement latest technologies which used to only be available for large companies.

Types of cloud services available for small and medium businesses -

Software as a Service (SaaS)

This is widely used service as every company is subscribing for software instead of investing money to buy it. Basically, the software applications are hosted on the cloud and once the user subscribes for it, access will be given to them over the internet. It can be purchased either for individual purpose or for organizational functionality. Whether it is a startup or an established firm, Saas is highly beneficial for Small and medium enterprises where no investment is required upfront for many of their day-to-day operational and functional services such as accounting, invoicing, payroll management, sales and planning etc. It is the only tool that mostly SMEs depend on unless they have complicated business structure where there is a need for other services for custom application needs. Microsoft Office. Google Apps, Salesforce, Concur etc are some of the Saas tools that are widely in use today.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

PaaS is another type of service in cloud where the users are allowed to access one of the platforms that is required for creating and deploying custom applications. It is widely used by the companies where sharing of application is required between the users from different locations. Particularly SMEs that have no ability to invest in physical infrastructures, can avail this opportunity to create custom applications that are specific to their businesses. It not only saves the companies resources but also cut the man power cost as it doesn't require high expertise to manage it.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

Computing infrastructure has become a costly affair for every business. Some SMEs even struggle to buy basic infrastructure to maintain their servers, databases, memory, security etc. One of the viable options for them is to rent virtualized hardware as per their business needs so that they can minimize expenditure to a great extent. IaaS offers cost effective and scalable solutions, as users will get the flexibility to expand or shrink the usage of services, cutting down the expenses on unnecessary resources. Public and private clouds are widely helpful in managing enterprise infrastructure, where businesses can easily store their data and run the applications without any complexity.

Smeph.net is a website about Small and Medium Entity Promotion in Hyderabad that contains exclusive articles, webinars, white papers & latest industrial updates to support and guide professional SMEs run their businesses successfully. We are thankful to professional SMEs like Marvist for helping in developing content to spread the awareness.

Vijay Kumar is experienced author; interested in writing blogs and articles on Smb methodologies and concepts.