Cloud Computing for Small and Medium Businesses: Meeting Specific Needs
Cloud computing is the future. Many businesses and a wide range of industries are now relying on cloud computing for anything from data storage to real-time operations. This is due to the fact that cloud computing can host many web applications while providing a cost-efficient solution for storing a large amount of information.
The use of cloud computing used to be the domain of large corporations with a lot of money to invest. Today, however, services providers – including NewPush – are offering cloud-based infrastructure as services, making the cloud more accessible even to small and medium businesses. How does infrastructure as a service affect different industries?
Cloud Computing for Better Healthcare Information System
The healthcare industry has been migrating to the cloud for a couple of years ago. The implementation of electronic health records or EHRs and the use of advanced information management systems are enabling doctors and physicians to offer better, more accurate treatment in a timely manner.
Even smaller clinics are now using cloud-based systems to manage their operations. These systems are capable of handling patients’ information, from records of treatments and prescriptions to medical imaging data. In fact, the demand for masters in health informatics has been on a steady rise.
It is also worth noting that universities such as Adelphi University are responding to the increasing demand by making their online masters in health informatics more accessible to students from across the country. The online courses enable IT practitioners to master the industry without having to become a full-time student for the duration of the course.
Cloud Computing for Online Commerce and Home Businesses
The use of cloud computing is not limited to large-scale operations. Today, there are home businesses whose operations are stored entirely in the cloud. Customer orders are captured directly on e-commerce platforms. Payment processing is done online and the home businesses can pull up customer orders for processing without having to download any raw file or data.
The use of cloud computing in this form means small businesses are less prone to catastrophic failures. In the event of a server failure, for instance, the business’s main website, as well as all the information stored behind it, is still accessible due to the nature of cloud servers. Some e-commerce platforms also have built-in backup functionalities as an added security measure.
Cloud Computing for Archiving and Data Storage
Archiving is a big challenge regardless of which industry you are in. The need to store documents over an extended period of time is one that is not always easy to meet. There are storage costs and maintenance issues to deal with. For small and medium businesses, storing paper documents may prove to be too costly.
This is where cloud storage comes in handy. Digitizing paper documents is very easy to do thanks to technologies such as OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and automatic document feeders. Thousands of pages can be converted into digital formats in a matter of hours. Once they are stored digitally, the documents are entirely searchable and very easy to manage.
Add the fact that cloud storage is very cheap and you have the perfect solution for storing documents over an extended period of time. Data storage, along with the previous implementations of cloud infrastructure as service we’ve covered in this article, is really boosting the value of cloud computing for small and medium businesses.