The COVID-19 outbreak caused a variety of instabilities across the globe, especially for businesses. Enterprises rushed to think of alternative options to ensure their survival. This led to the rise in the adoption of various forms of technology in every industry. Shifting to the enterprise cloud platform emerged as one such effective solution, which allowed businesses to ensure the smooth running of their operations.

Businesses that struggled to operate due to high operational costs, variations in the supply chain, and fluctuations in logistics after the pandemic are now able to function smoothly with the help of cloud-based architecture. Yet again, while there are myriads of benefits to adopting an enterprise cloud platform, choosing the right one is not that simple. Firstly, you need to ensure that the cloud solution you choose is the perfect fit for your company by evaluating its cost, security, flexibility, and application complexity management.

Read more: Choosing the Right Digital Workplace Software for Your Company

Different types of Enterprise Cloud Solutions

While thinking about an enterprise cloud platform, it is worth noting that there are three different types to choose from – public, private, and hybrid. Each of them varies in its capacities, strengths, and features. Here is a quick look at how the cloud platforms differ from one another.

Private Cloud

As the name indicates, private cloud infrastructure is designed for a single organization. All its components like software and hardware resources are owned and managed by the business. Some well-established organizations even develop their own cloud architecture, while others hire reputed cloud service providers to administer the cloud infrastructure and its resources for them. In either case, the entire cloud platform is exclusively used by a single entity.

Public Cloud

Unlike the private cloud, public cloud platforms allow multiple subscribers to use their resources, and it can be any number of users depending upon the cloud service provider. In the public cloud architecture, the third-party provider manages the infrastructure and its computing services, which are accessed by organizations on-demand over the internet.

Hybrid Cloud

A hybrid cloud model combines both private and public cloud services to give you the best of both worlds. This allows businesses to manage confidential business data on the private cloud while deploying less sensitive applications and workloads on the public cloud. Moreover, the workloads can be moved between cloud solutions as per the needs of the business.

Read more: Why Should Modern Enterprises Rely on Private Cloud Platforms?

Devising the right strategy to choose a Cloud Infrastructure

If you do not make the right choice about the type of cloud solution for your business, it could incur more costs when managing it. Therefore, you should do a proper case study of your business requirements to see which enterprise cloud platform caters to your demands aptly. Some quick points to consider while developing an enterprise cloud strategy.

Control

If you are going to assign the workloads across your organization over the business cloud platform, you need to ensure that you have complete control of the dashboard. At the same time, if you are not fond of managing the cloud resources and the infrastructure and do not have an in-house IT team for that either, then going for managed cloud services would be the better choice.

Workload

Hybrid cloud gives you more flexibility in terms of dividing the workloads between the private and public cloud. Simultaneously, you can also scale the resources and shift between platforms when the costs fluctuate. This means having a well-planned strategy to ensure effective management of the cloud resources when the need arises.

Security

Ensuring optimal data security is crucial for every business, especially for those that deal with confidential customer and client data like payment records and financial details. That is why it is essential to do a thorough assessment of the compliance and security policies of the cloud before adopting the solution for your organization.

Operational Costs

If you are a small-scale business starting to use an enterprise cloud platform for the first time, then it might be quite challenging to determine which one would be a cost-effective solution for you. Yet again, it is important to consider the operational costs of the cloud platform and ensure that you can bear that without any hassles.

Application Complexity

Each type of cloud solution has varying degrees of complexities around handling the IT infrastructure. Therefore, you should evaluate how to integrate the cloud solution into your existing processes to ensure effective deployment. Likewise, you should also consider whether you would be using it for legacy applications or server-less workloads to devise the right strategy.

Flexibility

Being a business owner, you cannot always expect the same amount of customer responses every day. It may be relatively low on some days, while it may turn unbelievably high on other days. So your cloud environment also needs to have the flexibility to respond to these variations. This is another reason why hybrid enterprise cloud platforms are growing in popularity these days.

Read more: What is Hybrid Cloud Identity and Why It Matters for Your Business

Why is it essential for enterprises to move to the Cloud?

Enterprise Cloud Platform is not a new concept; it was introduced in 2006 with the launch of Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the first-ever enterprise cloud storage service. However, over the last decade, the enterprise cloud has rapidly become an innovative solution for businesses that look to future-proof their operations and drive efficiency. Within the short span of about 15 years, the enterprise cloud grew to be an essential asset for all kinds of businesses, with security and flexibility being the main driving forces for its adoption.

In today’s business environment, where every piece of information is stored in digital format and shared among concerned parties via digital channels, data security is a concern for all. Being exposed to cyberattacks would certainly damage the reputation of the business, not to mention the financial losses it can create. This is where enterprise cloud platforms like InfinCE can help with their robust security features and allow organizations to bolster data security.

In addition to providing specific tools to monitor and ensure high-end security, enterprise cloud also allows organizations to have a reliable disaster recovery plan. So even if adversity strikes, be it a service outage or a natural disaster, you can rest assured of getting things back on track quickly when all the essential data and services are managed on the cloud. Meanwhile, migrating to the enterprise cloud platform will also pave the way for innovation and trying new things at minimal expenditure.

The success, efficiency, and end result of adopting an enterprise cloud service invariably depend on many factors. Yet, the scenarios mentioned above and points would help you to formulate a practical strategy and make an informed decision for your business. So, to make the next move for your business, talk to our experts today!

Embracing cloud technologies is one of the typical components of digital transformation. According to a Gartner report, “By 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, infrastructure software, application software, and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to the cloud.” This statement speaks aloud how cloud computing is becoming the most disruptive technology for businesses in this digitally forward era.

As with adopting any technology, moving to the cloud also requires having a robust plan. Most organizations move to multiple clouds to make the most of the technology and have the utmost flexibility. This is where the hybrid cloud comes into the picture, as it facilitates all the demands of such enterprises by providing paramount agility and cost-efficiency. However, it is also seen that a hybrid cloud infrastructure can create many security vulnerabilities if it is not deployed properly.

Read more: Top Cloud Trends Your Enterprise Should Pursue to Succeed in 2021 and Beyond!

How to Deploy a Hybrid Cloud Approach Perfectly

Hybrid cloud infrastructure merges the workloads on the public and private cloud to allow enterprises receive the best of both models. This gives businesses enhanced flexibility to shift their cloud and on-premise workloads as and when required. Hybrid cloud is also a better option because it allows organizations to have better control over their data. Companies can store their sensitive data on the private cloud while they can manage the other workloads on the public cloud. At the same time, they can have a unified platform to configure and manage the capabilities of both and enjoy simplified administration.

It is a known fact that cybersecurity concerns are on the rise, which is why enterprises that move with their digital transformation strategies also need a reliable approach to avoid cyberattacks. Reports say that most of the data breaches in recent years have been due to the misconfiguration of cloud services. In fact, it comes only second to hacking. Although migrating to the cloud allows businesses to prevent that by outsourcing the services to a reliable partner, it does not make the cloud totally protected from cyberattacks. That is why cloud services providers are stressing the need for adopting identity and authentication approaches to improve security.

Read more: 6 Ways InfinCE Simplifies IT Infrastructure Management For Enterprises

How IAM Can Bridge the Gap in Cloud Security 

Identity and Access Management (IAM) can be a vital ingredient in protecting access to resources and data in a hybrid cloud environment. With a hybrid cloud identity strategy in place, businesses can rest assured that only the right people with pre-defined, secure digital access can use the resources and data. It is like an authentication authority for the hybrid cloud infrastructure, with capabilities like Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Single Sign-On (SSO), which reinforce cybersecurity. Apart from that, hybrid cloud identity can also allow for seamless experiences for the employees and customers, in turn leading to improved overall productivity.

Cloud SSO can reduce the usage of traditional passwords, which can not only provide a better employee experience but also decrease the costs of password resets. On the other hand, IAM in the hybrid cloud can help to boost customer satisfaction and loyalty rates by providing secure, password-less logins and unified profiles. At the organizational level, IAM helps to monitor user access to the distributed resources over the public and private clouds. Administrators can set specific rules for users and grant them different levels of access based on their job roles and requirements.

Who Needs a Hybrid Cloud Identity and Access Management Solution?

A hybrid cloud IAM solution can also be integrated and deployed at any level, regardless of whether the data and resources are stored and managed on the public cloud or in the on-premise data center. However, it is essential that enterprises identify their IT and business requirements before deploying hybrid cloud IAM so that it fits their needs in the best way. Ensuring this alignment between the varied demands of the company will be a key defining factor in the efficiency of a hybrid cloud IAM solution.

Read more: How InfinCE Cloud Orchestration Platform Can Be A Game Changer For New Business Owners

Companies That Operate Globally

Large enterprises with branches all over the world usually have a huge suite of applications that they use on a daily basis to manage their workflow. These apps and resources can have complex requirements and may require re-architecting to make them compatible with the hybrid cloud infrastructure. Therefore, such organizations retain some apps to be managed in on-premise data centers while deploying others on the public cloud. This makes it imperative for such enterprises to ensure high-end security on both ends to keep their data and resources secure.

This is where hybrid cloud IAM becomes the preferred option by allowing the company to secure applications at every level as necessary. When defining Identity and Access Management (IAM), Gartner says that “Enterprises that develop mature IAM capabilities can reduce their identity management costs and, more importantly, become significantly more agile in supporting new business initiatives.” With a hybrid cloud IAM solution, they can integrate and secure local workloads while defining enhanced security for the resources on the cloud.

Companies That Need to Comply With Regulatory Requirements

Many enterprises need to fulfill specific regulatory requirements, especially if they are doing business on a global scale. This can range from local regulatory norms to national data residency requirements. According to a Gartner report on market trends and cybersecurity, “Personal data privacy has become an intangible asset in this data era. Protecting privacy by standing on the consumers’ side is a differentiator to build a strong brand for any company that is in the consumer business.”

As hybrid cloud IAM is built to support data sovereignty, it allows such companies to host and store their data required for a specific location in that region, while managing globally intensive data on the public cloud. Meanwhile, they can also define user access and control over the data access, usage, and sharing with a well-designed hybrid cloud IAM strategy in effect. That in turn allows such businesses to ensure compliance on every level without compromising on customer expectations.

Companies That Look to Reduce IT Costs

As businesses are becoming increasingly digital-dependant, the IT and admin teams are required to deal with a wide variety of requests. At the same time, they may have to work with limited resources while having to deliver a broader range of requirements. With a hybrid cloud identity plan in place, businesses can save significantly on IT operational costs while not having to cut the quality or amount of support they have been providing to their customers.

Hybrid cloud IAM allows enterprises to handle the challenging use cases efficiently without having to break the bank for the same. It can facilitate centralized identity management on the enterprise level as well as across multiple clouds while providing the tools to automate and maintain the IAM solution. In other words, hybrid cloud identity allows organizations to free up their IT staff from managing infrastructure, which helps them to focus on other higher-value activities.

Read more: Why InfinCE Digital Workplace Should be Your Remote Work Companion

Start the Hybrid Cloud Journey Today

Having a smart digital transformation strategy is what businesses need today to stay competitive in the industry. As migrating to the cloud can be described as a stepping-stone toward digital transformation, enterprises need to realize the flexibility a hybrid cloud infrastructure can provide. Know more on how a hybrid cloud identity solution can boost security, improve productivity, and deliver seamless experiences for the employees and partners. Connect with us today, or Sign Up with InfinCE for free to experience infinite cloud for your business.

Reinvent Your Legacy IT Operations with Cloud Automation

Cloud automation tools are capable of making digital transformation realistic compared to legacy IT and software platforms.

Conventional software is usually installed to work on virtual machines (VMs) and desktops. Whereas InfinCE was built in the Cloud and is known for representing the next generation of smart automation platforms that can significantly boost your legacy IT operations.

InfinCE allows businesses to effortlessly automate recurring, manual jobs such as email handling, systems updates, data processing, and documents management. Today, organizations are increasingly embracing cloud applications. However, some businesses are still unconvinced with cloud-based solutions. 

Are you among those organizations that don’t know much about cloud automation’s business benefits and its role in accelerating digital transformation? This post will help you gain a clear picture.

Cloud automation helps companies improve their legacy IT operations

1. Economical cost of ownership

Cloud automation allows you to bypass the maintenance cost, which is preordained when you own hardware. In addition to hardware costs, organizations also need to employ more human resources for installing, troubleshooting, securing, and upgrading the hardware. All these add up to the total cost of ownership. Now, it will be easy for you to understand the cost-effectiveness of cloud automation.

2. Centralized authority

InfinCE’s enterprise cloud platform offers a unified environment for your organization. It helps you organize, control, and audit the automation activity throughout the organization more effectively. You can also easily manage the access rights and multi-layered permissions at the organization, user, object, group, and data levels.

Read more: Top 4 Advantages of Centralized IT Administration for Your Business

3. Security and reliability

According to a report, more than 90% of businesses witnessed a significant security improvement when they adopted cloud automation solutions. InfinCE has the potential of working with both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure to offer unmatched cloud-hosting and related services. These organizations provide an abundance of resources strictly for cyber-security compared to a legacy IT department, which comprises physical and network security.

InfinCE offers not only multi-tenant hosting options but also facilitates security with single-tenant hosting plans. It implies that you can own a dedicated, isolated account that manages your data with utmost exclusivity. All data on InfinCE is encrypted in transit and at rest through enterprise-grade security norms. InfinCE has completed HIPAA and SOC 2 tests, audited by a third-party auditor. It indicates that the servers of InfinCE are placed in high-security data centers.

Read more: 5 Features of InfinCE that will Transform The Way You Work

4. Low risk and swift execution

InfinCE is capable of setting up a new customer account in no time. Once created, a user needs to sign in using their web browsers and start structuring automation. With the Software as a Service (SaaS) pricing model, any organization can begin development at a reasonable cost and invest further only after achieving success and ROI on automation. This contrasts significantly with in-house installed cloud automation tools, which usually demand substantial cost and time to get started.

5. Orchestration in cloud 

A business process includes numerous departments apart from employees, such as customers, suppliers, contractors, partners, job candidates, and third-party associates. Having a cloud automation tool like InfinCE that offers top-notch orchestration in Cloud, these various parties can easily contribute to the automated workflow by completing necessary forms, signing documents, and uploading files. Such an orchestration in the cloud allows you to easily automate the overall process, not just the steps that occur within your organization’s particular area.

6. Remote management

Usually, the most traditional automation software is installed on PCs, but that is not the case with InfinCE. Using a web browser, you can access InfinCE. This implies that InfinCE is compatible with Macs and PCs and can also be operated with a smartphone, credit to its remarkable responsive design. As today’s employees prefer to work outside the office, your automation software must be capable of keeping up no matter where the employees are or what device they are using.

Read more: 5 Ways an Integrated Cloud Platform is Beneficial for Your Small Business

7. Constant improvement with zero upgrades

Being a cloud platform, InfinCE ensures that a business is continually reaping its latest version’s benefits. You don’t have to install or update the software on your computer manually, and your end-users do not have to wait for upgrades. Moreover, InfinCE releases new features at regular intervals and adds more features with every release, ensuring growth in efficiency for your organization.

8. Cloud automation tools are scalable

Cloud automation platforms are scalable almost in any manner you want them to. For example, if you wish to store large data sets in data tables of InfinCE, you need not concern about increasing hard drive space as InfinCE is rightly equipped to manage that for you. The more departments and users you bring to the platform, the system management actions and centralized governance will minimize friction and manual effort. The SaaS model of InfinCE is designed to surge pricing as a fraction of the value you realize, meaning you always achieve a greater ROI.

Read more: 3 Strong Reasons for Your Business to Embrace Cloud-based IT Services

Final thoughts

To transform your organization digitally, you must implement a cloud automation solution that is economical, offers swift deployment, gets connected easily, and is designed to adjust as you grow. InfinCE’s reliable cloud automation tool makes digital transformation more attainable for your organization and ensures to improve the legacy of IT operations.

Download White Paper: The Business Value of InfinCE for Business Owners and Employees

In the modern business world, automation has turned out to be a boon for organizations as it provides better resource utilization, IT operations, and workload distribution. These are the reasons that today’s enterprises are moving towards cloud automation tools at such a fast pace. If you are also an entrepreneur striving to automate your business operations, the automated solutions of InfinCE can turn out to be advantageous for you. Contact us to learn more. 

Choosing the Right Pricing Model for Enterprise IT Services

The recent trends in digital transformation have paved the way for ensuring optimal business growth for enterprises. With the rates of public cloud adoption going up, it seems that leaders have recognized the potential of modern IT tools and technologies for generating better revenue. Simultaneously, organizations have also started to find alternatives to traditional IT infrastructure models and achieve improved agility in their operations.

Today, the cloud has become ideal for businesses to build enterprise applications at much lesser costs quickly. Cloud also allows them to utilize advanced technologies to scale their operations and stay competitive in the market. As new IT solutions are entering the industry every day, organizations need to identify the right platform to manage their workloads.

Read more: Private Or Public Cloud: Where Should My Business Invest? 

Choosing the right pricing model for enterprise IT services

Partnering with a reliable IT services vendor like InfinCE gives organizations the option to run workloads on-premises and on the public cloud. This works to bolster the security of sensitive company data further while ensuring superior operational efficiency. Although adopting the best IT models is always the goal of a business, leaders also look for responsive technology partners that can offer IT solutions at the best costs. So, it’s crucial to choose the right pricing model.

There are predominantly two types of pricing models for enterprise IT services – subscription-based models and consumption-based pricing. Choosing the right pricing strategy allows a business to scale their IT resources up or down as needed while saving some money in the process as well.

The consumption-based approach is usually the go-to option for companies that want to make their business operations more agile. On the other hand, a subscription-based model suits those who want to keep their budget under control while benefiting from the potential of modern IT tools and technologies. 

Read more: 5 Reasons For Small Businesses To Adopt SaaS Model 

Listed in this blog are three principal business areas that are primarily affected by your IT pricing model’s choice.

1. Enterprise IT Operations

In the past, launching a new IT project required considerable hardware and software investments. Sometimes, it also needed months of planning and execution to get it right. Today, businesses demand faster solutions that will allow them to launch an IT project on the go. It can be facilitated easily by collaborating with an agile IT services provider.

A subscription-based model means that you will need to pay upfront for receiving the services, be it cloud solution or on-premise. Some vendors also allow customizing the features in their subscription models so that you can decide which elements you will need to optimize the IT operations of your company. As the costs are determined based on the length of the subscription, long-term plans often mean lower business costs.

On the contrary, the consumption-based IT model allows you to pay for the services you use. While this can be a good option for those who have trouble keeping their IT systems updated with software updates and patches, it will need you to cherry-pick the required tools and technologies every time you want to launch an IT project. So it is vital to choose an end-to-end IT solutions provider when going with the consumption-based pricing model.

Read more: InfinCE – A One Stop Technology Solution for Small Business 

2. Running Workloads

Working with a reliable IT services vendor that will take care of everything from equipment maintenance and on-site configurations to training and support for your in-house team is always the best choice to stay ahead of competitors. That’s what InfinCE does for its customers. InfinCE’s technical concierge allows businesses to access IT support via phone, email, or live chat. The concierge helps you resolve the problem either by yourself or by arranging for a technician, depending on the challenge’s complexity.

When the IT vendor manages everything, a fixed recurring invoice can lead to better savings than paying every month. As subscription-based models are evolving, it gives you greater control and flexibility when choosing IT plans.

It also means determining your workload requirements adequately before choosing a pricing plan so that you can avoid all kinds of risks and keep a check on the costs. You can also use both public and hosted private clouds as per the plan to explore better opportunities to develop enterprise applications and services. Meanwhile, if you go with consumption IT plans, you can easily and quickly scale the IT resources on your terms and effectively run the workloads.

Moving between public clouds and on-premises setups can also be much cost-effective when it is consumption-based pricing. Enterprises can easily choose the business-critical applications necessary to improve performance or deal with any latency issues. Likewise, it can also be beneficial to pull back the workloads with highly sensitive business data that cannot be left off-premises.

Read more: How can modern IT management software empower companies to be more agile? 

3. Capacity Planning

IT capacity planning needs companies to evaluate their resource utilization, workforce needs, and application usage before buying the servers, storage, and network infrastructure from a vendor. In this case, using a subscription-based service works out because businesses can have a predictable expense to manage their revenue stream. Moreover, subscription models also save on the costs of full purchases to gain access to the IT tools required to cover their demands.

On the contrary, the consumption-based model, or the pay-as-you-go approach, allows organizations to make an immediate purchase for their unplanned IT decisions. This can help deal with sudden demand peaks that cannot be managed with the existing infrastructure. This also means that those who are not adept with capacity planning can benefit from consumption-based IT pricing strategies. A reliable vendor can also help you determine future capacity requirements and see if the resources are enough to meet those upcoming demands.

A subscription-based model can be a boon to businesses that need an all-in-one platform for their enterprise needs. For instance, InfinCE offers a vast pool of features to support the business’s changing needs for fixed pricing. Customers can also personalize the plans with added resources to match their current and planned needs, which will lead to better operational efficiency and productivity.

Read more: 5 Points To Consider While Choosing Your Enterprise Collaboration Software 

Selecting the right pricing model 

Choose consumption-based IT model, if you:

• Prefer maintaining a more agile business operations approach
• Need to shift too often from public cloud to on-site system
• Cannot determine future peak demands precisely
• Want scalable IT resources for unplanned potential workloads
• Do not have dedicated personnel or the resources to manage any software updates or IT maintenance work

Choose subscription-based IT model, if you:

• Need a greater level of control and flexibility over your IT plans
• Prefer to have a predictable monthly expense
• Have the capacity planning done right based on the predefined budget
• Do not want to look for the required tools and technologies every now and then for new IT projects
• Want a comprehensive solution for managing everything from IT systems configurations to training and support

Choosing an all-in-one business management solution can help you become flexible and responsive to meet the customer demands and ensure optimal growth for your business in today’s competitive environment. The final decision to go with usage-based models or subscription approach should be based on your business’s actual requirements.

Want to know more about the flexible pricing plans offered by InfinCE for businesses of all sizes and capacities? Contact us! 

Why Small Businesses Need to Invest in SaaS Delivery Model

The widespread adoption of Software-as-a-Service or SaaS model of technology deployment is undoubtedly a key driver of digital disruption across industries. Studies show that the global SaaS market is expected to touch or exceed a staggering USD 623 billion by 2023. And the biggest beneficiary of SaaS across every industrial sector is small and medium businesses operating in these sectors.

While big players do have their own key advantages, it is the smaller players who can truly transform their business. With SaaS, they get access to powerful tools that can enable them to compete with the best in the business without worrying about costs. With SaaS, they only need to pay for the resources they use, can scale up or down depending on business needs and enjoy hassle-free technology deployment without dedicated monitoring staff. This allows them to offer the best of services to customers using the same digital solutions as used by leaders in their industry.

Still skeptical about making the SaaS switch? Here are 5 reasons to transition your small businesses digital infrastructure into a SaaS model:

Related Reading: Private Or Public Cloud: Where Should My Business Invest?

1.Save on Costs

As a small business, you need considerable investment in core business processes and resources like for example, inventory for a retail business. There isn’t too much scope for spending heavily on IT projects if your core business is not technology related. But you need the best of digital solutions to serve the savvy and demanding consumers of today. Here is where SaaS-based software can be your best friend.

SaaS solutions typically work on a subscription basis, where you pay for what you consume: be it storage, computing power or number of users. And most cloud software is available for ready deployment with easy customization to suit your unique needs. This enables small business players to use world-class software without worrying about hefty license fees and implementation costs.

2.Flexible Infrastructure

By infrastructure, we mean the technology back-end of SaaS solutions that can accommodate any fluctuations in usage patterns. For example, a retailer may see increased use of technology services during peak holiday seasons. This scenario may require extra storage space or computing power to process transactions faster and deliver constantly seamless customer experiences. If you were to have an IT infrastructure on-premises, then jacking it up to meet the extra demand would involve a Herculean effort. Not to mention, the cost overhead for extra capacity, which may find a use for only a few days or months every year.

In a SaaS model, small business owners need not worry about scaling their technology infrastructure in pace with the demand from consumers. SaaS providers offer easy scalability and managed services to ensure that your technology rises up to the occasion when it’s needed. This flexibility empowers small businesses to focus on improving their business processes while trusting their infrastructure to run on its own risk-free.

Related Reading: Why Should Your Business Invest in Cloud Native Digital Technology?

3.Access to Innovations

Today, every successful business, across any industry relies on powerful technology like artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics and so on to serve customers better. As a small business, you may not have the financial muscle or technical skill to build and use such technology in your daily operations.

However, with SaaS solutions, the story is completely different. SaaS vendors continue to invest heavily on incorporating market innovations such as AI, machine learning, etc., to enable their solutions to deliver more value. When you subscribe to their solutions, your business stands to automatically benefit from using this technology from day one.

4.Zero Maintenance Effort and Cost

Unless your small business opts for a private cloud infrastructure hosted on your own servers, you are less likely to incur any costs of maintaining your SaaS solutions. There is no need for dedicated staff to monitor availability or conduct periodic maintenance of hardware. All these would be managed by the SaaS vendor themselves and you only have to pay for the subscription plan you opted. This can be extremely useful for small players as they can control IT costs significantly and channel their savings into their core business.

Usually, all SaaS vendors commit to near 100% availability for their services and for cases of technical downtime, they usually notify customers well in advance to be prepared for any disruptions. Not having to hire technology professionals to run these solutions enables you to recruit more talent having niche business skills to grow your business.

5.Faster Deployment

SaaS software usually goes live in a matter of minutes for small businesses that have no or minimal customization requirements. Once up, any incremental changes or new feature additions can be rolled out without causing any disruption to the customer’s business processes that rely on these solutions. Vendors can roll out these updates at any convenient time without having to disrupt the customer’s business operations and without having to involve stakeholders from the customer’s side for every deployment. As a business owner, you can sit back and relax while new features get added seamlessly to your digital solutions faster and with more robustness.

Related Reading: INFINCE – A One-Stop Technology Solution for Small Business

SaaS is the future of small business technology as evident from the high rate of adoption it has found globally. The large plethora of benefits that customers get to enjoy while subscribing to powerful SaaS solutions with significantly low investments on cost and effort is a key driver of this adoption trend.

All you need is a strategic technology partner to enable the best value from your SaaS investments by offering you a powerful solution and tailoring it to suit your unique business needs. This is where INFINCE can be the game changer in your journey. Get in touch with us to know how your small business can leverage the power of SaaS with INFINCE. 

5 Advantages of Adopting a Cloud-Native Technology Infrastructure

The number of enterprise applications that run on cloud is so big now that it is wiser to refer to the cloud as a way of doing IT rather than labeling it as an IT innovation. Today, the concept of cloud native applications is a mainstay and the new normal. For those who are not acquainted with the term, a cloud-native application in its simplest form implies an enterprise application that has been designed and developed specifically to run on cloud infrastructure.

It means that cloud-native application development is rooted in containers, microservices, and dynamic orchestration. The paradigm shift from costly on-premise technology infrastructure to on-demand subscription-based service availability has found takers from all business domains and includes all magnitude of enterprises ranging from multinational corporations to small and medium businesses. In fact, research firm Gartner estimates that today over 80% of all internally developed software enterprises are cloud-native. So why is there a growing affinity for cloud-based technology deployments? Here are some key benefits you would experience with a cloud-native strategy for your technology stack:

1. Cost Efficiency

Tougher market competition and dynamic consumer needs require you to constantly upgrade and evolve your business’s technology infrastructure to roll-out new services and offerings through digital channels. Configuring or re-engineering on-premise enterprise applications that handle various aspects of your business will involve heavy costs and time which will eat into your overall IT budgets.

The market dynamics change so fast that you may need to alter or roll back new features on your consumer-facing digital channels as soon as they get launched, in order to make way for newer or modified ones. When IT expenses go overboard, it will impact your profit margins significantly, leaving you with the minimal financial muscle to invest in your core business. With cloud native applications, upgrades, as well as dynamic changes to software, can be easily handled. By configuring changes incrementally to the cloud application, it can be quickly made available to end-users at considerably lower costs.

Related Reading: Private Or Public Cloud: Where Should My Business Invest?

2. Flexibility and Scalability

As with any cloud-based software deployment, you get the benefit of scale on-demand with a cloud native application strategy. When your business starts out from the root stage, you may not need massive amounts of storage or computing power to run various digital customer channels and as time passes, this requirement may vary depending on growth factors. This is where the scale on-demand capability of the cloud will be very attractive. You need not maintain physical storage or computing hardware regularly to scale up your technology back end when demand spikes occur. Everything would be easily managed on the cloud and business owners can focus on ideas and initiatives to expand their customer service while the technology silently scales up behind the curtains to ensure there is no disruption.

3. High Availability

For any digital-friendly initiative that a business wants to propagate to engage with their customers, a key necessity is the constant availability of the back end digital applications that make this experience possible. If the technology has been built with an on-premise model of operation, then not only does a business need to ensure the application’s resilience, it also needs to ensure that the supporting hosting and maintenance infrastructure is robust to empower continuous business without disruption.

With a cloud native architecture for your business applications, this disruption-free availability is a guaranteed benefit. Leading cloud service providers offer uninterrupted availability of the hosting environment with limitless expansion flexibility to accommodate sudden spikes of transactions or business growth. This gives business owners one less major technology paradigm to worry about. Additionally, there is 24 X 7 support from cloud vendors to assure that any challenge is mitigated seamlessly without causing any disruptions to your business operations.

4. Increased Efficiency

With a cloud native application architecture, it is quite easy for enterprises to automate a large number of tasks involved in the operation and deployment of their digital infrastructure. By building components within an application as microservices, it is easy for scaling, modifying and upgrading specific features or modules within the application without having to rebuild the entire thing from scratch. Besides, cloud native applications are inherently extensible through APIs that enable them to be integrated seamlessly with other reporting and analytical tools for deriving insights that can be used for better decision making by enterprises.

5. Secure Data Management

While it has been proven beyond doubt that public cloud environments offer nearly unbreakable security for your business data, several decision-makers do not want to move their core data systems to public cloud infrastructure for fear of security threats. By creating cloud-native enterprise applications, you get to manage your data on your own private cloud infrastructure and ship data to and from various systems in your own cloud environment. While storage and expansive flexibility can be availed from leading cloud providers, you have control over your entire application landscape wherein your own security policies and protocols can be implemented in addition to the standard procedures followed by these vendors.

The unparalleled benefits offered by a cloud-native application strategy is a boon to businesses that want to engage with the digital-savvy consumer base of today. From handling their internal operations to building customer-facing digital channels, businesses can rely on enterprise cloud service providers like InfinCE to deliver a robust and secure environment to build and deploy applications. Get in touch with us to see how InfinCE can help transform your business’s technology into a truly cloud-native one.

Why Is The Public Cloud A Better Digital Transformation Option?

A decade ago, only a fraction of large scale enterprise applications, as well as consumer-facing applications, were in the cloud. Today, everything, from video and music streaming services to enterprise systems like ERP resides on cloud-based platforms. The large scale disruption that occurred due to the widespread adoption of cloud computing was the transition of one-time expensive licenses for software into highly affordable and flexible usage.

The benefits do not end with just cost but also the improved scalability that organizations were able to enjoy when their business or transaction volumes fluctuated during peak and non-peak market conditions. This is precisely the reason why the enterprise SaaS market is generating revenues of over $20 billion in a quarter for software vendors with a 32% year on growth. Industrial sectors ranging from banking to healthcare, retail, utilities, public services, and manufacturing have all made massive strides in cloud technology adoption. In fact, studies have shown that one-third of all IT budgets from enterprises now go into cloud solutions and platforms.

So cloud computing is here to stay and grow. The question now is what type of cloud, enterprises should invest in to ensure that their digital aspirations are offered the most compatible and progressive growth platforms. The major cloud options available for enterprises are public and private cloud systems. So what exactly are these? Here’s a brief explanation:

Private Cloud

A private cloud system is one that resides purely within an enterprise IT infrastructure and managed comprehensively by their own in-house technical team. From the deployment of applications to maintenance and upgrades, every activity that happens on such a cloud environment is owned, controlled and managed privately by the enterprise themselves. In short, the enterprise builds its own controlled cloud environment for internal usage and restricts any external access.

Public Cloud

A public cloud system is one in which your data and or applications reside on a cloud platform provided by reputed cloud vendors. The vendor is responsible for managing the data center requirements such as storage, application development support, processing and computing power, security and other infrastructural requirements.

So how can enterprises decide on choosing what’s best for their business? Let us examine the top 5 parameters every enterprise must evaluate before selecting their cloud infrastructure and how public and private cloud systems fare in each of these parameters.

1. Security

Every modern-day organization has to deal with truckloads of data that needs to be processed for decision making across different departments. When this entire process is transitioned into cloud-based systems where data is communicated over the internet, then security is a key concern. If an organization were to build their own private cloud infrastructure, then they would have to invest heavily on fortifying their cloud environment from threats. They could argue that external threats are lower than in the case of public cloud systems, but the effort involved in deploying and managing security protocols especially physical security of data centers is humongous.

Besides the right knowledge on how to thwart different levels of threats that arise in the industry from time to time will be limited if you engage internal staff to handle these security issues. As for a public cloud system, they would be aware of how to manage and neutralize the latest threats in the industry. In addition to that, the advantage of dedicated physically secure data centers, public cloud systems offer cloud infrastructure in your desired level of security preferences.

2. Technical Workforce Requirement

If your core business is non-IT, then the number of staff required to maintain a private enterprise cloud ecosystem within your business would be considerably larger if your business deals with a sizeable volume of IT transactions. This workforce requirement spans across different categories of IT technical staff like network administrators, physical and cyber security experts, database management teams, application maintenance and environment support teams, etc. Having a large dedicated IT workforce would result in significantly higher manpower requirements for a non-revenue, operational stream within your business and hence could impact staffing requirements across other key functions gradually due to budget constraints.

Additionally, your in-house technical team may not have access to industry awareness sessions and workshops that dedicated public cloud service providers offer to their staff. Hence, they would not be in a position to handle complexities that may arise from time to time. Public cloud service providers, on the other hand, invest in R&D, training and learning sessions to keep their workforce aware of what’s new and innovative in their industry. By preferring them over your own private cloud infrastructure, the knowledgeable workforce requirement challenge is mitigated considerably.

3. Scalable Infrastructure

Today’s businesses need a flexible technology infrastructure that can handle large fluctuations in their consumer demands and market conditions. For example, if you are an online retailer, then your technology backend will witness massive loads during the holiday shopping season and hence may need to scale up bandwidth, storage, computing, and analytical power, during this season. If you have private cloud infrastructure, then scalability will not be a flexible advantage since it would involve upgrading your own hardware infrastructure as well as other platform strengths to handle surges in usage.

Maintaining this high level of operational infrastructure all through the year is an expensive affair since the surge may be restricted to just a few months, but the hardware maintenance needs to be an ongoing activity all through the year. This is where public cloud systems offer an on-demand scalability advantage to your technology infrastructure. You can increase your cloud environment, performance, storage, and computing power in times of sudden business spikes and transit back to normal usage levels once the peak usage period is over. This will result in huge savings in terms of cost as well as management of cloud infrastructure as you only need to dynamically manage requests for increased transactions and not have the infrastructure boosted up always.

4. Ease of transitioning

Migrating your legacy on-premise system to a cloud-based platform is not a cakewalk activity. It involves careful planning, strategizing and prioritizing of business functions that need to be migrated to a cloud-based platform. If you are to building a private cloud system for everything, then the overheads involved in project management, application development, data migration, hosting and ultimately the availability of the system for consumer-facing business operations will be a challenging one.

If you opt for ready to deploy public cloud systems on the other hand, then all it takes is your data to migrate into the new cloud ecosystem after a small personalization or customization exercise. Or if you want to transition your proprietary enterprise applications in a cloud environment, then again the stability and support offered by public clouds can in no way be matched if you were to build a private cloud ecosystem to facilitate the transition.

5. Cost of Operations

The cost factor is a culmination of all the above parameters mentioned in this blog. As you can witness clearly, a private cloud requires quite a big investment to ensure that the organization’s technology infrastructure is on a secure and scalable cloud ecosystem with skilled and technically competent staff. This investment is not a one-time activity because technology evolves over time and you need to constantly transform with the changing technologies. With a public cloud system, you only incur the subscription cost while all other management and periodic feature upgrades are intelligently handled by the vendors themselves without passing on a heavy cost to users. This would mean that your organization would be able to significantly lower IT investments and hence core business operations would receive a higher budget allocation.

Related Reading: Migrate to the cloud efficiently! Check out our free guide to enable effective cloud transformation.

Thus, a public cloud system is the most feasible solution for enterprises to transit their digital assets into a cloud ecosystem. As more and more technology vendors bring newer innovations in the form of cloud-based ready to deploy platforms, it becomes easier for businesses to concentrate more on their core operational matters and less on their IT investments. With an infinite cloud platform like INFINCE, transform your business into a truly digital enterprise. Get in touch with us now!