The past twelve months has seen the continued rise of Cloud – a truly business-changing concept and one that has become a reliable and widely accepted service in a continually self perpetuating industry.
Traditionally, the costs of housing an on-site IT infrastructure in addition to the costs needed to administrate and support it, presented a huge financial obstacle which would have proven crippling for many fledgling recruitment companies.
The rise of the Cloud, however, has ultimately given start-up agencies the ability to rent, rather than purchase, their entire IT infrastructure, eradicating both the need for physical on-site equipment and the costly in-house resources.
The benefits of the Cloud for start ups and SMEs are reflected in the figures – from a software provider’s point of view, we have seen a large increase in the amount of businesses that are using Cloud, with 99% of start-ups we are in dialogue with selecting this option. Cloud has not only enabled these start-ups to overcome the obstacle of large initial outlay, but it has also allowed recruiters to focus upon what they are good at – running their recruitment business – rather than having to worry about the IT infrastructure which is often not an area of expertise.
Cloud is also becoming an increasingly popular choice for many larger recruitment companies who are attracted to the benefits of alleviated financial and in-house demands. For those established companies with an in house IT department in place, however, a fully serviced solution may not prove to be the most suitable option. In such cases, there are software providers that offer both a hosted and a client hosted solution, which gives an element of flexibility to the end user and caters for all requirements.
As with any option there are pros and cons of moving to the Cloud and organisations must assess their suitability on an individual basis. But what is certain, however, is that the numerous benefits of the Cloud have ensured that uptake only looks set to continue to grow and recruitment companies can be safe in the knowledge with the Cloud is indeed, a valuable and trustworthy method of running critical business systems.
