The cloud offers a multitude of benefits to businesses of all sizes. Whether you own a local patisserie in Terrace Bay or a multinational corporation headquartered in Toronto, you’ll find that proper cloud utilization can drive growth, solve technology problems, streamline operations, and bring in more business. Working with a managed cloud services provider in Toronto is the key to efficiently achieving your digital growth objectives.
According to Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud Report, 86% of small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) saw higher-than-expected cloud usage in 2020 due to the pandemic. This attests to the continued upward trend of cloud adoption, as well as the cloud’s indispensability to the post-COVID workplace. If your SMB is looking to migrate to the cloud or leverage cloud technology, consider investing in Microsoft Azure.
What Is Microsoft Azure?
Azure is the umbrella term for Microsoft’s as-a-service public cloud computing platform, which includes offerings such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
Azure can be what your company needs the cloud to be, and it can be easily customized according to your business’s unique needs. What’s more, Azure has integrated cloud resources that improve security and compliance management, allowing you to use cloud services without worrying about data security.
How Can Azure Drive Your SMB’s Growth?
Microsoft Azure is not just for big enterprises. In fact, even smaller businesses will discover that it has many benefits to offer to their growing organizations. Here are some ways Azure can support your SMB, particularly as you move your business assets from your on-premises infrastructure to the cloud:
1. Flexibility in Growth
The Azure cloud lets you start small and grow at your own pace. Azure allows you to easily scale up or down according to demand, eliminating the need to make large scale commitments for the long-term. On the other hand, if you’re buying your own storage infrastructure, you’ll have to plan for any memory, storage, software licensing, backup, security software, and other changes down the road.
If you’re expecting to grow quickly over the next three years but don’t know exactly what you may require, a managed cloud services provider in Toronto e can easily customize solutions to meet your needs. Azure also implements a usage-based billing formula, so you’re guaranteed to pay only for the services you use.
2. Data Storage and management Benefits
Whether you need to use the server area for a different purpose, want to improve your perimeter security, or simply don’t have enough space, Azure can provide safe data storage solutions for your business.
Azure also takes the pain out of data monitoring, management, backup, and recovery. It allows you to automatically schedule regular backups, so you can quickly restore data from a recent point in time, thus minimizing downtime and ensuring the operability of cloud-based apps and services. This, in turn, lets your IT personnel focus on more critical tasks such as optimizing your internal systems.
3. More Savings
Azure is one of the best cloud options for modern SMBs looking to upgrade their tech without shelling out a hefty lump sum on IT investments. It empowers them to carry out a wide range of tasks, such as workload migration and app deployment, without having to buy or maintain an underlying infrastructure. And because Azure enables businesses to launch and store both internal and external applications in the cloud, it also lowers hardware and maintenance expenses and overall in-house IT costs.
Also, with Azure, you pay only for the storage you need. It’s typically difficult to buy storage for a very small company, as a single physical server will have more storage than necessary. Azure can give you just the storage you need, so you don’t have to pay for services that you don’t require. You’ll also enjoy flat, predictable monthly costs that can add structure to your budget and help you manage your finances better.
4. Seamless Integration with Microsoft Products
Azure easily integrates with Microsoft products, which simplifies the application of security policies and improves user experience. For instance, authentication can be shared between your Azure environment and Microsoft 365, saving time without compromising security.
Azure also enables you to build and deploy integrated solutions across Microsoft applications and services on premises and in the cloud. What’s more, you can enjoy further savings if you already use Microsoft cloud services and products such as Windows or OneDrive, as Azure allows you to deploy existing licenses on the Azure cloud without additional charges.
5. Improved Security and Compliance
Azure has built-in security services that protect data, apps, and infrastructure. It is also backed up by security and compliance certifications and unparalleled security intelligence, allowing organizations to identify and respond to threats early and robustly. With its layered security and in-depth defense strategy, Azure is the cloud solution of choice for many businesses in high-risk industries such as healthcare, government, information security, and finance.
Extensive multistep authentication and disaster recovery mechanisms are also in place to protect your sensitive company information from hackers and equipment malfunctions. Unpredictable disasters such as floods and power outages caused by inclement weather conditions no longer pose a permanent security threat to your organization’s data. With the help of a reputable Microsoft cloud services provider in Toronto, you can easily regain access to all of your digital data remotely.
6. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Integration
Using the automated analytics platform known as MyAnalytics, Azure integrates advanced information collection software that offers valuable insight into your regular digital business practices. Authorized employees have extensive digital tools such as predictive analytics and Microsoft Insight at their disposal. Employees can use these tools to get an in-depth overview of common work-related trends, manage weekly team meetings and collaborations, track sales, place orders for orders, and automate various professional practices to maximize efficiency.
With managed cloud services in Toronto, businesses can also take advantage of hybrid, public, or private cloud hosting services depending on their setup.
7. IOT Devices on Cloud
Microsoft is in the process of making some exciting upgrades for IoT devices that are connected to the cloud. Over the next few years, they’re investing $5 billion in their IoT devices. IoT Central will be at the center of the rollout, a variety of industry-specific project templates. Healthcare and manufacturing industries are the top priority for the foreseeable future, but other types of project templates are also continuously in the works for upcoming Microsoft cloud services.
Talk to XBASE Technologies Today!
Azure is one of the top IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions brands worldwide. Apart from having best-in-class security and impressive cost benefits, it also has the additional advantage of being integrated with other Microsoft products, enabling you to complement or build on your existing Microsoft infrastructure to create efficient processes.
Talk to our cloud experts at XBASE Technologies today so they can help you prime your business for growth and remain ahead of the competition. Send us a message or call us at 647-697-7710.