Thousands more passengers are stranded in airports and many are looking for alternative and costly ways to get home. For businesses struggling to cope with continuing recessionary pressures and nerves in the City frayed ahead of a possible hike in capital gains tax, companies need to ensure they remain available to their stakeholders and clients but cannot risk costly flights abroad for face-to-face meetings.
As businesses start to count the cost of the losses incurred, more and more of them are turning to a cloud of a very different kind and availing of cost-effective and efficient technologies such as cloud computing. With many firms prevented from making mission-critical presentations across the UK and around the world, they are heavily considering technologies such as remote working and web conferencing. Many organisations are now looking at integrating these technologies into their daily business activities, having discovered the cost efficiencies, reliability and flexibility offered by cloud computing. With independent research analysts Gartner predicting that by 2012, 20% of companies will own no IT assets, cloud computing is set to revolutionise businesses around the world.
‘What many companies have learnt from the disruption caused by the volcanic ash is that cloud computing technologies are a risk-averse way to conduct business. Not only have they demonstrated thousands of pounds of savings on travel costs for SMEs but are an efficient way to communicate regularly with important stakeholders such as customers, suppliers and staff. Many companies that have never used the cloud but have discovered it through the current travel crisis are now realising the additional benefits it delivers: improved responsiveness, productivity and scalability, and reduced ownership and energy costs,’ explains Tim Wallis, CEO at Content and Code.
Cloud computing is a simple principle. Instead of connecting to software and hardware installed on the user’s business premises, software and applications hosted in a secure environment (the cloud) are consumed over the internet on an on-demand basis. Cloud computing allows businesses to ‘consume’ pooled resources of software and hardware and pay for it per month, per user. It is not about spending large sums of money on ‘new’ technologies; it is about capitalising on what they already have. It brings together enterprise email, calendaring, team and project sites, instant messaging and web conferencing.
Tim Wallis adds: ‘The businesses we are supporting with the cloud are reporting greater levels of efficiencies, savings and increased productivity – these are all major contributing factors which are helping them to survive and grow in challenging economic conditions.’
Content and Code is offering a free 30-day trial, which includes 20 user licenses for Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Office Live Meeting, and Office Communications Online part of the Business Productivity Online Suite.
For more information, please visit: http://www.contentandcode.com
