#CloudDayKE: Why cloud adoption is critical for SMEs in emerging markets

Oracle Kenya, marked yet another Cloud Day in Kenya. Some of the key highlights were why many businesses were moving to the cloud and why more businesses need to join the bandwagon.

“For three years, Oracle has worked on cloud and the year 2015 is quite critical for us and the cloud business. This year cloud has reached that point where it is quite important for businesses to adopt. The cloud adoption should be well implemented in the emerging markets as it helps provide answers to this market as we need speed to catch up with the ’emerged markets,” said Dr. Gilbert Saggia, County Manager Oracle Kenya.

Small and Medium Sized Businesses also need to be on the outlook. Dr. Saggia also added that, Oracle was working on transforming market modules for their cloud business to fit into the SMEs and they were looking into ways to help more SMEs move into the cloud seamlessly this is because any SME that adopts cloud Technology will be able to stay ahead of its competitors as cloud computing increases efficiency, helps improve cash flow and offers many more benefits.

Here are more reasons why SMEs need to adopt cloud solutions:

Increased competitiveness:

The cloud gives small and medium-sized organisations the ability to utilise systems similar to the biggest players in any industry. Cloud computing allows you to present your organisation in the same league as much larger organisations. Since you are only renting ‘usage’ from cloud providers, you are in essence renting top-of-the-range infrastructure and software

Security:

Security is a key concern for many businesses especially when it comes to cloud. Most companies are hesitant since they really don’t know what should or shouldn’t be stored in the cloud since cybercrime has become big business and cyber criminals are looking for new targets top of the list being small and midsize businesses. Why? Small businesses usually don’t have a big security department or investments in high-powered network defenses and services, which means attackers can often get in with less effort.

However, companies like Oracle have introduced next generation security that comes in built on the cloud platform. Speaking during the Cloud Day Kenya, Oracle Country Manager, Dr. Gilbert Saggia, explained that Oracle knew how important security is to organisations, “Security should be always-on and highly encrypted. At Oracle we have ensured that we take care of your cloud technologies as the customers accesses the data in a safe and secure way.”

He pointed out that on security Oracle had introduced a new solution to its customers, that comes with color codes assigned to individual processes so that anytime there is access to data from the cloud there is a matching color code. If the color codes do not match the data can not be accessed making Oracle cloud more secure for businesses.

Cost:

Moving e-mail and other services to the cloud can sometimes save money and, if you are a small business, it may actually keep you safer.

According to a study some 800,000 laptops are lost each year in airports alone. This can have some serious monetary implications, but when everything is stored in the cloud, data can still be accessed no matter what happens to a machine.
Disaster recovery

When SMEs start relying on cloud-based services, they no longer need complex disaster recovery plans. Cloud computing providers take care of most issues, and they do it faster.

Document control:

If an SME doesn’t use the cloud, workers have to send files back and forth over email, meaning only one person can work on a file at a time and the same document has tonnes of names and formats.

Cloud computing keeps all the files in one central location, and everyone works off of one central copy. Employees can even chat to each other whilst making changes together. This whole process makes collaboration stronger, which increases efficiency and improves a company’s bottom line.