5 Benefits of Cloud Computing You Aren’t Likely To See In A Sales Brochure

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Cost savings… elasticity…. scalability…. load “bursting”…. storage on demand… These are the advertised benefits of cloud computing, and they certainly help make for a solid business case for using either third-party services or a virtualized data center. But after the agreements are signed, systems and processes are set up, and users are retrained, something unexpected happens.

The initial use cases are realized, but then additional benefits begin to emerge — sort of like the icing on the cake, but often, these unforeseen benefits provide far more value to the business than initially planned. Over the past couple of years, I have spoken with many CIOs and executives who not only talk about the unplanned challenges, but also cite pleasant surprises as well. Here are some examples of such unexpected benefits that emerge as cloud projects roll along:..

More flexibility to get into new businesses. What holds back new the pursuit of ideas among entrepreneurs and large organizations alike? Time and money, or the lack thereof. Say you want to design and test a new product line. With the available of on-demand cloud resources, new configurations can be up and running within hours or minutes, so that helps reduce the time element. Since users will only be charged for that amount of time they use cloud, that helps reduce the money needed. Even within the largest enterprises, innovation springs from constant experimentation, the ability to keep trying new ideas, and be willing to fail. On-demand cloud resources provide the way to try out new ideas without extreme investments in supporting systems. And a shift in business focus can be made fairly quickly…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/joemckendrick/2013/07/21/5-benefits-of-cloud-computing-you-arent-likely-to-see-in-a-sales-brochure/