Cloud Hosting

Cloud Hosting

Hosting your documents in the cloud is quickly becoming the standard for modern businesses and organizations. Cloud storage allows you to save office space, cut down on security costs, and grants you immediate access to your files anytime and anywhere.

Every business relies on documents of some form in order to run smoothly. Having such valuable information physically available leads to the need for extra office space to store it and more security to guard it. Although once it’s stored and guarded, it becomes a hassle to get to at a moment’s notice, especially if you’re not at the office and a customer calls. That’s where cloud hosting comes in.

How Document Cloud Hosting Works

First, you have all of your documents scanned, digitized and indexed according to your retrieval needs. Second, the digital documents and metadata are formatted and uploaded to the cloud hosting platform. Lastly, the files are encrypted and locked away, and only you are given the key. Since the files aren’t physical, they can’t be stolen by a thief or lost in a natural disaster.

The encryption that the files are put through essentially scrambles their data and locks them away in a vault, which is far better security than any guard. The only way to decrypt the files is to sign on with your unique login ID and pass a multi-step verification. This can be done wherever you have access to the internet.

Let’s say you’re traveling between business meetings or are far away from your desktop, and a customer calls asking for specific information off of their documents. With traditional storage methods you would have to ask them to wait until you’re in your office, or to hold while you call another employee to look it up for you. With cloud hosting you could sign on through your smart phone, view the documents, and handle the client seamlessly without them ever knowing.

This same method of seamless viewing can also assist in b2b meetings if someone left a document at the office. As long as that document has been backed up online, you could pull it up on your phone or a local computer and continue with your meeting.

Why should you manage documents in the Cloud?

1. Cost Savings

With cloud hosting you don’t have to pay for expensive servers and computer space to store your files. Apart from the acquisition cost for that technology, there is also the maintenance and constant power supply needed. The monthly fee for cloud hosting falls below those monthly costs, without the need to spend even more and buy the equipment yourself.

2. Accessibility

Once your documents are on the cloud you can access them anywhere you have internet, even your phone on the go. Additionally you can make tags in documents to find specific sections faster or search the document as a whole for key words.

3. Security

A cloud host’s job is to monitor security as a primary objective day and night; unlike your IT guy who does it a few times a day then goes home. Mixing that monitoring with the latest in password and encryption key technology, your data has never been harder to steal.

4. Regulatory Compliance

Strict document storing regulations are commonplace in most businesses, with hefty fines for any case of noncompliance. With the cloud’s improved space and cost, you’ll never risk falling into noncompliance due to lack of space or capital again.

5. Disaster Recovery

Try as we might, there will always be things out of our control that impact us and our businesses. Things like natural disasters can wipe out local data entirely or damage systems leading to a lengthy data recovery time. Meanwhile 20% of cloud users reported that they recovered their data in four hours or less after a disaster vs the 9% who used non-cloud based methods.

6. Collaboration

With digital files, you can make as many copies as you need instantly. You can also control who has access to what documents, so if you have a team working on a project, just host the files and give everyone access. Not only will they all be able to see their own copies of the documents, but they can make virtual notes for other users to see and collaborate. No more trying to schedule meetings between everyone’s schedules, it’s always on and ready for whoever is available, and those that aren’t can read the discussion archive later.

7. Quality Control 

Being able to pick and choose who has access to what documents is already a major form of quality control. Add in the ability to see who made what changes when, and you have quality control that can’t be beat. Never misplace a document or lose old versions again.

8. Sustainability

We’ve all heard about carbon footprints before, and if you’re a green company then you’ve tried to figure out ways to reduce yours. Cloud hosting is a phenomenal way to reduce your carbon footprint. Easier collaboration from anywhere allows for a drop in commuter related emissions, and hosting companies use green energy and bulk space to cut down on energy costs. Instead of 10 companies drawing power to run their servers and power to cool them, there is just one company keeping one room cool and running. Data center energy consumption could drop up to 31 percent from 2010 to 2020 due to the use of cloud computing and other virtual data options over traditional setups.