Cloud event can boost your business

Find out how your business can embrace the future

When mobile game Pokémon GO launched last summer, there was barely a fresh faced youngster – or older geek – not engrossed in the chase and capture of the virtual critters.

Love it, hate it or not really care one way or the other, it was still an online sensation that took the gaming world by storm.

Few fans, of course, would have paused for a second to consider the technology that enabled such a worldwide phenomenon to launch, grow – largely without major hiccups – and adapt to the massive and sudden explosion of users.

It’s likely that even fewer in the business community would have considered how similar behind the scenes tech could be employed to help transform the way their own data travels, is stored and develops.

Yet Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which fuelled the online game’s massive growth, as well as other cloud-based storage platforms and services are bringing opportunities to tech savvy businesses, regardless of size and type.

Blue sky thinking

Some of the world’s most familiar business names – from Pokémon GO’s developers Niantic to holiday home rental go-between Airbnb, music host Spotify to entertainment giant Netflix – have flourished thanks to using cloud based platforms.

As small start-ups, they took advantage of being able to instantly access powerful servers whenever they needed to, without the financial hit of having to invest in their own costly servers.

And as global giants, they now take advantage of their cloud providers’ massive storage facilities, confident of its security and that as technology screeches ahead, they won’t be left behind.

Many now insist that the cloud model works so well, they wouldn’t dream of swapping it.

Businesses and organisations across the globe have ditched rooms full of costly servers in favour of using Google Cloud Platform’s virtual machines to serve and build new websites, develop apps, store data and analyse results.

So how can it work for everyone else?

Power to the people

Cloud computing has evolved from being just somewhere to file a document or store your family photo album.

Today the likes of Google Cloud Platform comes equipped with a wide range of services including machine learning and networking services, big data solutions, access to powerful virtual machines and security add-ons.

It has already transformed the way large corporations and organisations operate, launched start-ups on the road to global domination and given even the smallest sole trader access to the kind of tech they might never have been able to afford to own.

The benefits can be stripped down to four key elements:

Scalability: Using a cloud platform means being able to scale up when you need extra fire power – such as an ecommerce firm might need during the Christmas rush – and wind back when there’s less demand.

Reliability: Embracing Google Cloud Platform, for example, means tapping into one of the world’s most robust infrastructures. Already capable of supporting more than 100bn Google searches per month, it already delivers a range of services to hundreds of millions of users with almost flawless availability.

Security: A key concern for many yet cloud platform services have been adopted by governments and global businesses. Google Cloud Platform data is stored in clusters of data centres – information can be replicated across three centres – with each protected by multi-layers of security. Given that a fire could wipe out your office based servers in seconds, a cloud-based platform guarantees it’s business as usual.

Cost-effective: No more clunky machinery to buy, service and upgrade, a cloud based platform means less immediate outlay for small start-ups, the benefits of extra fire power when needed so you can cut down the ‘rent’ when you don’t, access to a more agile and responsive way of working and reliability which means less outlay for specialist support.

Future proof your business

Failing to embrace the potential of a cloud based platform could be costly. Diane Greene, Senior Vice President, Google Cloud recently warned: “Over the next five years, businesses of every kind will be transformed by smart data, analytics, machine learning and digital communications.

“What is going to differentiate business in the future is digital technology.”

Cloud Technology Solutions is Google’s only cloud Premier Partner in Scotland. You can find out what the Desktop of the Future looks like at their events across Scotland. Click here to register your place.