Data protection and disaster recovery are two aspects of the cloud that firms find beneficial.
Putting valuable information in the cloud is one of the best ways firms can shore up their data protection strategies.
According to Claire Galbois-Alcaix, a senior marketing manager at Mozy, cloud computing has had "a huge impact" on companies around the world, and they are now beginning to see the benefits of storing data in the public cloud.
"Cloud computing is definitely there to offer benefits to businesses of all sizes. If you’re a very small business, it allows you to adopt technology that might not have been affordable or practical for you to implement," she pointed out. "If you’re a very large business, it will offer you really strong efficiencies and economies."
As well as storing data securely and ensuring firms have disaster recovery plans in place, cloud computing allows businesses to bring in flexible working patterns for their staff, which will go a long way towards attracting the best candidates to vacancies.
"I think as well, the big trend that is starting to emerge is a new generation of recovery and restoration services," remarked Ms Galbois-Alcaix.
"Traditionally, services were split between disaster recovery services – which were just offering access to duplicate systems – and then you had the backup offer, that was only giving you access to duplicate data. Now we see there’s a conversion between those two types of services."
The expert added that this year is set to see more organisations turning to offsite backup storage via the cloud, and it will be more widely seen as a mainstream IT solution.
Meanwhile, Kevin Tea of Businesscomputingworld.co.uk noted that climate change, the rising cost of living and the threat of terrorism could conspire to make businesses think clearly about the advantages of cloud-based services – especially so that they can allow their employees to work remotely.