Cloud computing offers businesses of all types and sizes the opportunity to satisfy their information technology needs with lower capital investment, enhanced security, greater flexibility, better performance and higher reliability at a lower cost.  Researchers have found that the in-house cost of operating a high traffic web site can be as much as three times the cost of operating the same web site using a cloud service.

Reduced IT Capital Expenditure

Given a choice would your organization rather invest capital in a new location or a new data center.  Most likely a new location would be your choice. With cloud computing your capital expenditure for IT infrastructure is minimized and the cost you incur for IT is based on your usage of IT resources.

Security

Every business using a network (intranet or internet) to provide customer services and/or support internal operations faces similar security threats from cybercriminals. To defend against these threats an in-house IT department must pay for high priced technical expertise to monitor this risk and insure that the most up to date security software is in place and functioning properly.  So consider the case when Company A hires John Doe as its security expert and Company B hires Jane Doe as its security expert.  John and Jane are both doing the same thing but for different companies.  However, if Company A and Company B both use a cloud provider then a single security expert at the cloud provider satisfies the security needs of both companies and the total cost for security is cut in half.  Since the cloud provider is not serving just two, but in fact many companies, the cloud provider can pay for more skilled security expertise.

Flexibility

With an in-house IT department operating at 90% of full capacity a 15% increase in demand for resources will trigger the addition of a new server, system software and database software.  With a cloud solution a 15% increase in demand for resources can be accommodated by simply dialing up the resources available in the cloud by 15%.

Better Disaster Recovery

Cloud providers typically operate multiple datacenters dispersed geographically.  The cloud provider supporting the QServ Workforce Manager operates 15 datacenters, 6 of which are located in the United States.  Multiple instances of the QServ application software and database operating in different regions are always active.  A service interruption in one region is seamlessly transferred to the backup instance with no apparent interruption in service.

Lower Cost of Operation

An in-house IT facility must be sized to accommodate peak loading which means that much of the time the facility is operating at a fraction of the full capacity.  This means that much of the time the in-house facility is paying for unused and unneeded capacity.  Contrast that situation with a cloud solution where the organization only pays for the resources actually used.