The Power of Cloud Storage for Small and Medium Businesses: Unlocking Efficiency and Security

In today’s digital age, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are constantly seeking ways to streamline operations, enhance collaboration, and safeguard valuable data. One solution that has emerged as a game-changer for SMBs is cloud computing. With its unparalleled flexibility, accessibility, and security features, cloud storage has revolutionized the way SMBs manage and store their critical information.

A recent study revealed that lower storage costs (69 percent lower) was the biggest factor in cost reduction when migrating to the cloud from on-premises hardware. In addition to cost savings, the cloud also offers amazing agility. Take for example that IDC reported the average total time required for deploying new compute/storage with Amazon Web Services plummeted from 38 hours (before AWS) to 10 hours (with AWS)—a reduction of 78 percent. This means that leveraging AWS’ cloud services provides SMBs with a great starting point to solving their data growth and storage needs.

So, where do you start? This blog post is a guide to what products, services, solutions and approaches you should consider when starting—or continuing—your SMB’s journey into the cloud.

Common storage challenges for SMBs

As your business grows, so do your data storage requirements. This often creates problems for SMBs with limited in-house IT resources. At AWS, we know budget and expertise are challenges to purchasing and implementing data storage infrastructure solutions. This leads to a number of recurring storage questions we hear from SMBs:

• “How can I keep data storage costs low while my business and data is growing?”
• “How can I address compliance standards and make sure my data is stored securely?”
• “How do I make sure my backups are monitored and accessible?”

Along with data growth challenges, security is another area of concern, not only for regulatory and compliance purposes but also managing the trust of your customers. SMBs are particularly vulnerable to data security issues such as malware, ransomware, and phishing. Without the necessary resources to implement robust security measures, SMBs may be at risk of losing critical data and damaging their reputation. You are also likely to have requirements to comply with various regulations and industry standards, such as HIPAA, PCI DSS, and GDPR.

This means procuring and managing data storage to meet a multitude of needs is hard, especially if you find yourself short on storage expertise. A complicating factor we often see is that if your business doesn’t have a storage strategy, it may have multiple teams using different storage solutions, leading to data silos and fragmented information. In turn, this makes it difficult to make informed decisions as you have no comprehensive view of your data. Lastly, managing backup and recovery processes can be complex and time-consuming with limited resources.

Easing your storage burdens with cloud storage

The challenges we mention above can be easily overcome adopting some of the following approaches:

• Use cloud storage services for your apps and databases
• Use built-in cybersecurity services the cloud offers
• Use the cloud for backups, archiving, and reporting

The benefit of using cloud storage for SMBs is that it offers a cost-effective and scalable solution for storing data because you pay-as-you-go. It eliminates the need for expensive infrastructure, maintenance, dedicated staffing, and capacity planning.

Take for example, Lira Medika, a private hospital in Indonesia. Their main server stored 3 TB of large x-ray files and other medical images. Existing servers reached capacity, but Lira Medika projected sustained growth over the following five years. The lead time for ordering and installing new servers was more than one month, and aging hardware had caused up to six hours of downtime on its main server and database. Since migrating to AWS, Lira Medika has maintained 99.8 percent uptime, improved database performance improvement of 20 percent (versus on-premises servers), achieved near-real time backup and failover capabilities, and saved 1-2 hours of manual work each day.

As mentioned earlier, cloud storage provides pay-as-you-go pricing so you can sustain your SMB’s overhead costs whether scaling up or down. It also enables you to save data securely online so that it can be accessed anytime, from any location, by those with permission. You do not need to manage your own data center.

Benefit 1: Embracing mobility and accessibility

Cloud storage empowers SMBs to break free from on-premises limited storage constraints and access data from anywhere, at any time, and from any device with an internet connection. Whether employees are working remotely, on the road, or in the office, cloud storage ensures seamless access to important files and documents, fostering greater productivity and collaboration across teams.

Benefit 2: Scalability to meet growing needs

One of the greatest advantages of cloud storage for SMBs is its scalability. As businesses evolve and expand, so do their storage requirements. With traditional storage solutions, upgrading hardware or expanding storage capacity can be cumbersome and costly. However, with cloud storage, SMBs have the flexibility to scale their storage resources up or down based on their changing needs, without the hassle of investing in additional hardware or infrastructure.

Benefit 3: Enhanced data security and disaster recovery

Data security is paramount for SMBs, especially in an era plagued by cyber events. AWS enables you to use robust security measures, including encryption, multi-factor authentication, and regular security audits, to safeguard sensitive information against unauthorized access. Additionally, cloud storage offers built-in disaster recovery capabilities, enabling you to backup critical data in the event of unforeseen disasters or system failures.

Benefit 4: Cost-effectiveness and efficiency

For SMBs operating on tight budgets, cost-effectiveness is key. Cloud storage eliminates the need for significant upfront investments in hardware, maintenance, and IT resources associated with traditional storage solutions. With pay-as-you-go pricing models, SMBs only pay for the storage resources they use, helping to optimize costs and maximize efficiency. Moreover, cloud storage eliminates the burden of manual backups and updates, freeing up valuable time and resources that can be allocated to core business activities.

Benefit 5: Data backup and recovery

Cloud storage offers a cost-effective solution for data backup and recovery with AWS Backup, providing durability, high capacity, and extreme scale. Data management policies can automatically migrate data to lower-cost storage based on frequency or timing settings, and archival vaults can be created to comply with legal or regulatory requirements. These benefits enable industries such as financial services, healthcare and life sciences, and media & entertainment to scale their data storage needs.

How data supports innovation and accelerates success for SMBs

There is also an enormous opportunity that data presents for SMBs. Through informed customer insights and market intelligence, they can pivot to meet shifting customer needs, pinpoint pertinent opportunities, and cultivate enduring relationships. Moreover, the insights SMBs glean from data equip them with a competitive edge and empowers them to distinguish their offerings and gear up for market disruptions. This is evidenced in a Forrester report titled The Competitive Advantage of Data and Analytics for SMBs.

The right data strategy and solutions empower SMBs to unlock more targeted marketing, better customer experiences, and strategic business planning, despite limited resources. Leveraging analytics and business intelligence on top of their data allows SMBs to drive innovation and compete through precise, strategic decision-making. This agility and customer focus unlocked by data analytics opens new revenue sources for SMBs.

How to get started

For many small businesses, managing ever-growing data can be a daunting task, especially with limited IT resources and tight budget constraints. However, with careful planning and execution, you can build a reliable and cost-effective storage solution on AWS. Getting the right help is also critical. Rather than embarking on complex DIY projects, use AWS Partners who can help you execute right-sized solutions tailored to your SMB’s workloads. For smaller tasks, AWS IQ Experts offer speed and agility in execution. If you believe you have a bigger project, contact us to speak to a cloud expert.

With careful planning, execution, and getting help where required, smaller businesses can get over complexity roadblocks in managing data. The AWS ecosystem offers the right balance across storage cost, durability and performance to successfully run data workloads on the cloud. There are a number of resources available from solutions, communities and case studies to explore to help you craft your data migration and storage strategy in the AWS Smart Business Hub.

Conclusion

In this post, we have shown how SMBs can leverage AWS purpose-built cloud storage solutions to increase the speed at which innovation happens, unlocking future growth opportunities. This can often lead to businesses realizing value by enhancing their customer experiences, generating new revenue streams, paying less for services that are needed thus reducing costs, ensuring compliance, securing and retaining the right talent, and reducing risk by maintaining the integrity and security of their data in the cloud.