When your company grows, data expands, reliance on it increases, and the on-premise data closet becomes challenging to maintain. Unless you have reliable backup and security, your data is inadequately protected. Depending on the size and knowledge of your IT team, keeping your internal infrastructure up to date can further burden the workforce’s responsibilities and leave you open to a cyber-attack. These issues will affect your ability to support primary business services and goals.

You are not alone. Forty percent of businesses cite outdated skill sets in IT as a barrier to meeting business and technology priorities. When combined with the cost, inflexibility, and lead times to get new hardware, the initial benefit of the on-premise data closet does not add up.

The on-premise data closet can be limited in flexibility to scale rapidly with your business. Adding more storage means buying new hardware. Without regular capital investment to expand, increase space, add resources to provision, and new hardware and software, your data closet quickly becomes limited and eventually a risk for your business.

There is little flexibility built into on-premise capacity, and new hardware is costly when it needs upgrading. Owning and managing an IT infrastructure makes it challenging to adapt to changing business conditions, implement business continuity, or develop new value-added applications. Today, the burden of managing an infrastructure (specifically as it ages) fundamentally limits many businesses’ ability to innovate and stay competitive. Small and medium-sized businesses are under increasing pressure to do more with less and use valuable IT resources to create differentiation through applications that support your unique business needs.

Instead of using IT resources on tasks to differentiate and grow your business, you are increasingly focused on finding the right employee with the skills required to maintain the hardware and software used by your company. The advantages of utilizing your internal IT team to their full potential take a back seat because you are tackling everyday maintenance.

You, alone, are responsible for business continuity and staying ahead of any security threats to prevent downtime that will slow the business. It is increasingly challenging to proactively address security issues and avoid productivity losses in a static work environment where changes cannot be made to avoid disruptions.