If you’re a small - to medium-sized business, you may be wondering about the benefits of hosting your Atlassian tools in the cloud. Is Cloud the right fit for your business? For an increasing number of rapidly growing SMBs, the answer is yes. Migrating to Cloud can play a critical part in ensuring unprecedented flexibility and efficiencies of scale, which in turn can help you accomplish your growth goals, for less.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at some of the reasons that Atlassian Cloud works for small businesses—and what you can do to ensure a seamless transition.
1. Provides unlimited scalability to grow your business
Perhaps one of the biggest challenges small - to medium-sized businesses face is how to scale up their operations quickly. With on-prem hosting, computing power is always limited since you have a fixed number of servers and load balancers. So, in the event of an expansion in operations, a small business will need to procure additional IT hardware to support the new staff. And if it needs to downsize, all the capital expenditures incurred to procure the additional hardware will be rendered redundant.
Cloud eliminates that problem completely with the help of automatic scaling, allowing you to almost instantaneously scale up to handle unanticipated spikes in demand or scale down whenever you need to. You have the flexibility to increase or decrease capacity as you need it, easily.
2. Improves performance and reduces risk for worst-case scenarios
Atlassian relies on best-in-class AWS infrastructure to maintain a globally distributed network of Data Centers, which allows them to host data in close proximity to end-users. This makes sure you can access data with minimal latency.
Moving your Atlassian toolset to the cloud also provides you with the redundancies you need to make sure that you don’t lose key data or functionality when disaster strikes. Even more importantly, downtime is rare, because reputable cloud providers can afford to implement robust reliability-assurance measures.
Another bonus is that applications that run in Atlassian Cloud are generally very fast. When servers get overloaded, you can increase your resource allocation in a matter of seconds.
These are all huge benefits for smaller businesses, which can’t afford to slow down due to sluggish connections, hardware failures, or lengthy downtimes.
3. Lightens the load for your IT team
One of the best cloud migration perks is that the servers are off-premise, which means you don't own as much hardware once you move to the cloud. Less hardware in turn translates into less time, energy, and cost spent on maintenance.This makes perfect sense for smaller companies with limited resources and time available for looking after expensive infrastructure.
From uptime guarantees to automatic software updates and resource scaling, Atlassian Cloud covers it all. Instead of patching servers in endless cycles or troubleshooting issues, your IT teams can focus on more strategic tasks like process improvements, team support, and planning.
4. Empowers non-technical teams, increases employee satisfaction
Another big win associated with cloud migration is that it empowers your non-technical teams to make quick changes to their systems, processes, and workflows without going through lengthy approvals or overburdening IT.
Features such as automated scaling and instant security and performance upgrades mean teams have improved flexibility and autonomy to embrace new features and benefits that improve their workflow.
The benefits here can have a significant ripple effect, empowering teams to be nimble and agile and making a positive impact on employee satisfaction. It's not surprising that many smaller companies report an improvement in job satisfaction post-migration.
5. Lowers your data security risks
Another key cloud migration benefit is reduced security footprint. With so much reliance on data and its safe-keeping today, it makes sense for small businesses to outsource their data and processes to a more secure location than an on-prem server.
When you go with a reliable cloud vendor, most of your security risks are outsourced in some form. With Atlassian’s dedicated security teams and stringent requirements, you can ensure the highest level of security, reliability, and privacy surrounding your data. This means your internal IT teams don't need to spend time on critical security issues.
Knowing your business-critical data is secure will also guarantee peace of mind. This is particularly important for small businesses, which could suffer deeply in the event of catastrophic data loss.
6. Simplifies remote work, improves collaboration
Cloud migration allows your business to enhance accessibility for remote teams and geographically distributed workforces.
Cloud security is built keeping remote work in mind, so distributed teams can securely access cloud solutions from anywhere, at any time, using an internet connection. Also, with all information available in one centralised location, you no longer need to worry about finding relevant content, or files being stored in silos.
This is especially beneficial for small and medium-sized businesses as it helps them broaden their talent pool beyond old geographical boundaries.
Find a trusted partner for your Atlassian cloud migration
There’s no doubt that hosting your Atlassian tools in the cloud offers many potential benefits for your growing SMB. The opportunity to take advantage of these benefits only makes your migration process even more critical, though. You need to properly plan, prioritise, and make informed decisions every step of the way.
If you’re trying to do everything in-house, the process can seem overly complicated and time-consuming. And any misstep has the potential to derail your already stretched IT budget. This is the reason why many SMBs choose to hire an experienced Atlassian solutions partner, who can ensure a quick and fuss-free migration process with minimal business disruption.
If you’re planning a migration to Atlassian Cloud, Adaptavist has you covered. We work alongside your team to review your business goals and expectations and advise you on all possible options to best serve your specific needs.
With our straightforward 'lift and shift' migration method, it all happens relatively quickly—some small businesses can switch over in a matter of a few weeks. You don’t have to do any heavy lifting.
Our dedicated cloud experts will ensure a seamless transfer of your assets to the new environment in a way that provides reduced migration time and allows you to take full advantage of all the benefits that Atlassian Cloud offers.
Find out more about our fixed migration packages, including our Basic Cloud Migration package—ideal for smaller businesses who want to easily move their on-prem instances to Cloud.
