Five Reasons to Work in the Cloud

What are the benefits of cloud computing? Many organizations find that cloud service providers (CSPs) can meet their needs while providing a number of additional benefits. Cloud infrastructure makes sense for both small organizations and large enterprises interested in taking advantage of modern security solutions and flexible computing power.

Keep reading for five cloud computing benefits that prove why it’s smart for your organization to work in the cloud.  

1. Match cloud resources to your evolving needs

A major benefit of cloud computing is scalability. Unlike buying additional hardware at on-premises datacenters, public cloud services can rapidly scale up as needed. Conversely, as the need for a certain resource (such as disk space or central processing units) decreases, your organization can easily scale back. This scale up/down model ensures organizations have the resources they need when they need them. CSPs also quickly introduce new cloud services and solutions and bring these to market faster, an added benefit of cloud computing. What used to take months now takes just a few days.

2. Don’t pay for what you don’t use

Moving workloads to the cloud has the potential to save money. With most cloud services, you only pay for what you use. There are no initial infrastructure costs. The general cost model is “the more you use, the more you pay.” The cloud can be a very cost-effective solution for scheduled workloads. This is a major benefit of cloud computing for organizations with set operating schedules. Most providers allow you to automate bringing infrastructure online to perform a specific task and then shutting it down once the work is complete. Thus, you only pay for the hours that the infrastructure is running.

3. Quickly recover from a disaster

Cloud computing can deliver a speedy and economical way to recover from a disaster. The ability to rapidly deploy cloud services is a huge benefit of cloud computing during a crisis. With cost-effective data storage options, an organization can keep a continuously synched copy of its data in the cloud for when disaster strikes. During a disaster, the systems “failover” to the backup systems and data. Once the disaster is mitigated at the organization’s physical data center, the data in the cloud can then “failback” in order to resume normal operations.

4. Leverage innovative technology to grow your business

Another cloud computing benefit is the ability to test new ideas and experiment with the latest technology. Technological innovation sometimes involves using new hardware and software which can be costly to procure on-premises, especially if the actual need has not yet been fully realized. Experimentation with technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms is possible by leveraging the cloud. After the experimentation process completes, the organization can decide to continue to leverage the cloud for a production environment or build the infrastructure on premises. Alternatively, if the experiment was not a success, the organization can simply shut down the cloud infrastructure and get charged only for the period of time the infrastructure was up and running.

5. Ensure your systems’ security using CIS Hardened Images

Cloud infrastructure can also offer advanced security options such as patch management, OS updates, and pre-hardened virtual machine images. By starting with secure configurations, organizations can reap the benefits of cloud computing with peace of mind. CIS Hardened Images are pre-configured VMs that meet vendor-agnostic CIS Benchmark security recommendations. Here’s how CIS develops CIS Hardened Images: 

CIS

CIS Hardened Images significantly reduce common threats such as malware, insufficient authorization, and remote intrusion. There are currently about 30 different CIS Hardened Images available on the following marketplaces: 

• Amazon Web Services
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Oracle Cloud

Answered: What are the benefits of cloud computing?

Now you understand why organizations both big and small are making the jump to the public cloud. By providing advanced options for security, cost savings, and automation, the growth of cloud infrastructure allows for technological exploration and innovation. When convenience, affordability, and security are top priorities, it’s smart to work in the cloud!     

View Available CIS Hardened Images