Cloud services: How to reduce your IT costs

Instead of stockpiling performance with their own bare metal servers and having little room for expansion, more and more IT service providers are procuring customised cloud services. This allows them to expand their portfolio without investment costs. In this blog post, we look at the business perspective of the cloud.

According to consultancy Accenture , cloud technology means businesses of all sizes can"scale and adaptquickly, accelerate innovation, drive agility, streamline operations and reduce costs."

This not only helps companies to survive the COVID crisis, but also contributes to increased and sustainable growth. In addition, sourcing cloud services from a reputable cloud hosting provider reduces security concerns: When working with an IaaS provider, the external partner usually takes care of the security of the IT environment, performs updates and takes over the monitoring and reporting of suspicious activities.

Adapts customer infrastructures in the cloud at the click of a mouse

The requirements for applications and the IT environment can change quickly - not only during exceptional years like 2020 - depending on the order situation or team development. Cloud services enable IT service providers to expand their customers' infrastructure at the click of a mouse and implement changes flexibly. At Xelon HQ, for example, new servers can be configured and more computing power activated within minutes. During the pandemic, it became clear that the cloud not only plays an important role in upscaling, but also in downscaling. This means that the IT infrastructure can be easily adapted when demand or traffic decreases.

Here's a quick summary of how cloud services can reduce your IT costs.

👆 Monthly billing

Cloud storage is often billed monthly and is therefore the best option for businesses that cannot or do not want to make huge upfront payments.

👆 Payment according to effective use

Your own on-premise servers are expensive and in most SMEs not permanently utilised to capacity. With cloud services, you can customise computing power and both upscaling and downscaling can be realised at the click of a mouse. The purchase of cloud services or cloud hosting from an external partner and the monthly billing according to effective use are easy on the budget.

👆 Saving labour costs

In recent years, numerous efforts have been made to address the shortage of young talent in the IT sector, and not only in Switzerland. Nevertheless, most HR specialists, recruiters and market observers agree that the so-called "talent gap" in the ICT industry is not likely to be bridged any time soon.

By working with a cloud hosting provider, you no longer have to struggle with the time-consuming recruitment of new IT talent. The external partner takes care of maintaining and servicing the software, performing backups and keeping the facilities up and running. Since all updates of your applications are done in the cloud by the cloud service provider, you save time and thus labour costs.

👆 No licence costs

When working with an IaaS provider, IT service providers no longer need to buy the latest versions of firewall and backup solutions every year. Companies that manage their IT infrastructure in our virtual data centre - the Xelon HQ - can use the Xelon HQ Backup. "With this option, you don't have to take care of the backups yourself. Neither technical know-how nor prior knowledge is necessary. In addition, customers do nothave to pay any licensing costs," explains Matias Meier, Head of Technology at Xelon. There are no licence costs for you and you can always use the latest licensed versions of the apps.

👆 Reduce the risk of expensive data leaks

Customer data enables companies to continuously deepen and improve their relationship with their customers, expand their offering and increase their market share. If a company has access to a representative amount of user data, its chances of positioning itself successfully in the market increase. In a 2019 survey by consulting firm Deloitte, 96 per cent of respondents said that data analytics would play a more important role in their organisations in the future. Companies must guarantee the security of all personal data stored. Both employee and customer data must be protected as best as possible. If this data is accidentally or intentionally compromised and it turns out after the cyber attack or data leak that the affected company had not taken appropriate security measures, it may face fines and sanctions.

With a cloud-based infrastructure located in Swiss data centres, you no longer have to worry about cyber attacks and data theft.

Cloud hosting simplifies up- and cross-selling

In addition to the cost and time savings mentioned above, new revenue opportunities can also be created by sourcing cloud services.

After the step into the cloud, hardware revisions and the permanent ensuring of the correct physical conditions for server rooms such as air conditioning and ventilation are no longer necessary. This leaves more time for the development of new offers for the customers of today and tomorrow. This strengthens customer loyalty, enables up- or cross-selling and helps in the acquisition of new customers.