When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, businesses across the country sent their workforces home and quickly learned of limitations within their infrastructure. The companies that had already fully embraced the cloud were slightly ahead of the competition.

Are you weighing the pros and cons of the cloud for business continuity? Let’s take a closer look at why the cloud is best for this strategy.
Better uptime
Backing up to an internal drive or an external hard drive won’t completely secure data. If someone steals your device, you instantly lose the backup it contains.

Microsoft has previously published end-of-life dates for Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Exchange Server 2010 – set to occur in less than five months. As a result, more and more software applications are moving to the cloud and many organizations are looking to make the migration to cloud computing.

Whether you're concerned about Microsoft's end-of-life implications, the time has come for a hardware refresh or you have a desire to eliminate on-premise servers, the cloud migration movement appears to be building steam. The increased volume of discourse includes misconceptions and overgeneralized statements about “the big move,” which may or may not be the best choice for your business.

The affordability of cloud computing and virtualization are helping small businesses do away with in-house IT hardware. Virtual containers are the next step in that trend. They come with plenty of benefits and are becoming easier to manage every day.

Virtualization and cloud computing are sometimes mistaken as one and the same, causing much confusion. For the record, virtualization is different from cloud computing, but these two technologies usually overlap.

Virtualization
Imagine a company with five servers, each assigned a single task such as storage, email, etc.

The term “serverless computing” conjures images of a world where business owners don’t need to purchase expensive hardware or configure complex software. Luckily, serverless computing isn’t just a dream — it’s completely real and is the next big thing in cloud computing.

Cloud computing marketing can be deceiving. When you see an image of the cloud, it’s often a happy, bubbly, white puffball floating delightfully in front of a blue sky background. Its presence is both calming and reassuring, which makes you believe that anything is possible.

The cloud allows businesses to take a more hands-off approach to managing their IT resources. And the hybrid cloud is rapidly becoming the most popular option in this category, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Hybrid clouds are a combination of private and public clouds.

Cloud computing and virtualization are similar but not interchangeable. Both have their own benefits, so it’s worth learning how each technology works. With this knowledge, you can make the most out of your technology investment.
Virtualization
Imagine a company with five servers, each assigned a single task such as storage, email, etc.