Small Businesses Could Avail Cloud Computing Benefits During Pandemic

The global economy is reeling under the stress of Coronavirus, the pandemic that has reached more 193 countries, impacting the livelihood of people worldwide. With more than 7, 81,842 positive cases and about 37,000 deaths from COVID-19 across the world, the real concern is how to control the number of patients which is multiplying by the hour. To contain the spread of this highly contagious disease, towns and cities in India have been forced into lockdown.

Besides, with more and more companies seeking ways to get their essential work done with a workforce that is now primarily home-based during the COVID-19, IBM has joined a legion of IT vendors that have been offering some of their critical IT applications and services for free to existing customers to help in this time of crisis.

Under the new offer, nine IBM cloud products and services are now available for use by IBM customers that need them at no charge for 90 days, including IBM Cloud, Aspera file sharing and team collaboration, IBM Security, IBM Video Streaming and IBM Enterprise Video Streaming, IBM Sterling supply chain tools, IBM Blueworks Live remote collaboration tools, IBM Cloud Event Management, remote learning resources, and IBM Garage. One of the tools, IBM Aspera on Cloud, is aimed specifically at new clients.

For large firms with big budgets, undertaking various levels of cloud computing has been much more viable so far.

For smaller businesses, however, the move to the cloud has been more cautious, largely by necessity. In the current pandemic scenario, with a wealth of cloud computing services across Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), companies can find the services they need without heavy software or hardware overheads using services like IBM's. A subscription to such solutions can provide companies with the cloud power they need, which can quickly be scaled up and down, and configured to meet changing requirements. For a free or nominal fee, a service provider can handle the hardware upkeep, software patching and updates behind the curtains. Smaller businesses, therefore, spend less of their valuable time and limited resources on tech, and more on operations to drive their growth and customer experience.

According to Sid Nag, research vice president at Gartner, cloud services are continually "shaking up the industry."

"There are no vendors we know of today whose business and revenue growth are not influenced by cloud adoption. By 2022, the cloud service industry will be worth US$331.2 billion, and what we see now is only the beginning."

For small businesses delaying the inevitable, there's never been a better time to make the leap.

Moreover, with a cloud storage service, whether it's Google Drive, pCloud, OneDrive or DropBox, to name just a few popular examples, employees across small businesses can quickly access whatever information or data they need (and have access to), and ensure that everyone is up to speed with any updates, wherever they're located.