Small companies could benefit financially from using cloud networks.
Cloud computing need not be the sole preserve of large, established companies – it can also be useful for reducing start-up costs for new businesses, according to Real Status.
Royce Murphy, chief executive of the IT modelling and visualisation company, explained that firms can avoid shelling out for equipment they do not need on a permanent basis by using the cloud.
"[Cloud computing] helped to keep our costs down significantly. Costs are lower in the equipment that we had to buy, costs are lower in the skills that we would need to employ and in our whole environment, physical space, dealing with security," he noted.
"There are other very practical benefits, for example, the amount of power that’s required or the space you will need. There are also some very specialised skill sets in dealing with storage or storage area networks in your servers. Those aren’t skills that we have in-house and by doing the heavy lifting in a cloud provider, those skills are with them."
Using the cloud also means companies can keep their records management online rather than resorting to files that take up a lot of office space.
Mr Murphy pointed out that cloud computing offers better security than firms can by themselves because it invests in security tools and procedures on behalf of hundreds of customers.
This means start-ups have better disaster recovery processes to fall back on should the worst happen – and it means all their hard work will not be wiped out in the event of a data breach.
Meanwhile, Japanese conglomerate Sony could be investing in better data protection services after confirming that hackers stole an unconfirmed number of Michael Jackson tracks during an attack on its music site.
Its PlayStation Network was hit by hackers last year and the theft of the late pop artist’s songs is said to have taken place shortly after that incident.