What to know about moving your business to the cloud

This past year, many companies had to adapt quickly, transitioning to a remote workforce and changing the way they interacted with customers. A major part of that change was moving data storage from onsite to the cloud.

Like banks, the pharmaceutical industry had been hesitant about using the cloud. However, as the advantages have become clear, companies are getting on board — especially since the cloud allows companies to scale operations up and down quickly based on demand and need.

If you are a small to medium business, you'll see major security benefits when you move to the cloud, said Mike Taylor, vice president of business development at Cii Technology Solutions. You'll have access to high quality security with access controls that may otherwise be out of your price range.

For example, when your data is housed in a data center, you benefit from redundant power sources, air conditioning, maintenance and 24/7 technical support that reduce or eliminate the downtime you might normally experience when maintaining an onsite system.

You can also choose a private, public or hybrid version of cloud services. Private services offer the highest level of performance, security, customization and scalability. Some companies choose a hybrid option to balance their storage and cost needs.

Another benefit of cloud integration is having two-factor authentication built in for cloud desktop services. This allows your business to store and deliver applications, data and operating systems over the internet, rather than running on a local computer's hard drive.

"If everyone's using the same version of the same software, they can work together," said Taylor. "Being on the same platform gives all company computers a more consistent look and feel."

This is particularly helpful when you have a remote workforce and want to hire employees who are not local.

"They can be set up on any home computer without the downtime required for IT to set up and distribute a new laptop," said Taylor. "It takes setting up a new user from three hours to 10 minutes. You can hire somebody in a different state and, with only a computer and reliable internet, user settings can quickly be configured remotely."

If you want to move some or all of your business data to the cloud, the key to a seamless transition is working with a company that knows what it's doing.

"You want to work with someone who has worked with the cloud for a long time," said Taylor.

Drawing from its 20 years of experience offering technical services, Cii Technology Solutions has developed an efficient cloud migration system that minimizes downtime while maximizing security.

"You are able to continue using your systems as normal until cut day, then you start working via the cloud," said Taylor. "We synchronize the data real-time as we go. As soon as you click save, your data is constantly in sync. Once the data is up there, we take the current database and drop it into the pre-staged cloud hosted application."