Managing Your Cloud Account
Once people sign onto the cloud, it tends to be a convenience that is so subtle, it is easily forgotten. Meanwhile, your business changes. People come and go and you haven’t made any adjustments to allow your cloud to meet your new needs. Here are some ways you can maintain your cloud subscription to effectively utilize your resources.
The cloud is an incredibly scalable solution for your business because you can instantly adjust it to fit your current needs. This means you can add or remove storage, users, and software. The cloud can shrink and grow as you see fit when you need it. Unfortunately, scalability is often forgotten and businesses miss out on the incredibly benefits of immediate scalability.
Manage Accounts:
Who is in charge of managing your cloud account? The point of contact plays an important role when making any changes to your cloud subscription. This person will be in charge of assessing the needs of the business and make changes accordingly.
Manage Users:
One of the first things to know is how many people need access to information on the cloud. As businesses grow, people come and go.
One thing you don’t want to do is continue paying for their cloud subscription after they are gone. It is a waste of your resources. Instead, you want to change users status immediately. The best thing you can do is look at your current users and find whoever needs to be added or removed. Once you complete this, you stop spending money on users you don’t need and get the right people access to your information.
Manage Storage:
There is a lot of power behind cloud storage. The greatest benefit is the speed in which it can be implemented. If you run your own in-house IT, you know that it takes some time to expand your storage solution. When you use a cloud provider, you know that you can easily add or remove storage instantly. This means you can grow your storage space right when you need to and avoid missing out on saving any files you have. You can also shrink your storage if you don’t want to over pay for your current needs. The best part is that you don’t have to deal with physical infrastructure or invest too much all at once to meet your needs.
Manage Software:
What software are you using on the cloud? It is important to determine what you are actually using and what you need. If you are cloud hosting software you don’t use, that is money you shouldn’t be spending. It could be better spent adding software that your company would actually use. Did you know you could add all sorts of software and third party apps to your cloud server and benefit in many ways? Integrating the software and apps you use makes sharing and transferring data much easier on you. Meanwhile, you can also eliminate your hardware limitations and work from other computers and mobile devices whenever you need to. For example, there are a lot of software solutions that you cannot utilize on your Mac at home. If the software were cloud hosted, you could then access software that would normally not work on a Mac.
BYOD Policies:
Many companies are implementing BYOD, or bring your own device, in the workplace. This of course lowers the cost of providing computers and other resources for your staff to complete their tasks. Instead, they bring their own devices and access the information they need through the cloud. Companies should have policies in place for accessing information from their own devices. If your employees can access information from a cloud provider, they should know the policies behind accessing data from a home computer or device. Their access can also be easily managed by removing their access with the cloud provider.
Keeping track of your cloud is an effective way to keep your costs low and have a solution that is customized for your business. Somebody should be in control of your cloud server and keep track of your staff, storage, and software needs. This way you continue to have a cloud that accurately represents your business.