Let’s face it, the cloud is here to stay!
And I can really feel a big shift within our customer base as the cloud becomes more prevalent in small to medium businesses. Back in 2013, when I was doing every demo before we had a rockstar like Larry Garcia on board, answering questions about BrightGauge being a hosted platform was commonplace.
Flash forward to today, and in the conversations we’re having now with prospective customers, the topic of hosted being a negative rarely comes up. As a matter of fact people see it as a huge benefit. We are no longer having to deal with objections because we are a hosted provider and can jump right into how we can make an impact on our customer’s business. Here are the Top 5 benefits we hear from our customers about using a hosted platform:
No Overhead to Manage
When you leverage a hosted solution, it limits the overhead (physical and personnel) that you need to deploy or manage. The days of having an on premise solution where you need to download an application and load it on a device physically in your office are way behind us. Not only does that take a ton of time to deploy but then it’s another piece of hardware/software you need to manage. As a small business, the less you need to deal with the better.
Lower Costs: Implementation & Ongoing
The pure nature of not having to manage anything locally on your network means you are bringing the cost to implement the application down. With no hardware to buy and no servers to purchase and set up, you’re also saving money on the labor hours for installation. When it comes to the ongoing maintenance and upgrades required for software, a subscription-based service will save money because there are no patches to install and no IT resources required since maintenance responsibilities fall to the service provider.
If you need more proof about the cost scale, don’t forget that a quicker implementation means a quicker Return on Investment. Hosted solutions can often be up and running in days or weeks, compared to the old-school traditional implementations which can take months on end.
Security of One vs. Many
One of the breakouts I enjoyed at the Gartner conference earlier this year was around the cloud and security. I’m not suggesting the cloud is 100% secure but cloud providers have a lot more to lose and lot more resources to dedicate to security because they are protecting many customers, not just you. So you get the benefit of their expertise without having to deal with it yourself.
Scalability
Leveraging the infrastructure of a hosted provider allows you to tap into their ability to scale up (or down) as needed. Most Software as a Service (SaaS) providers make it very easy to scale their platform to meet the needs of their customers. At BrightGauge we pride ourselves on the ability to offer a solution that meets the needs of a small company with less than 5 employees but also scale to meet the needs of our larger customers with 200+ employees.
Easy Sharing
With an internet-based solution, users can easily share their data. So whether they’re working with a customer, on a team project across multiple office locations or even with a teammate in the field, location will never hold back sharing capability.
It’s a fact. The cloud is here to stay (along with hosted software platforms) and will only continue becoming a more regular fixture in our technology stacks. When it comes to selecting the best BI solution for your company, my advice is to start comparing your choices based on these 5 key business benefits. Once you can weigh the pros and cons of overhead, costs at hand, security, scalability and ease of sharing, you’ll be able to select the best match for your software needs.