Every business wants to grow, whether that means gaining more customers or expanding into different markets. Growth does, however, have side effects, especially when your company relies on IT infrastructure to deliver that growth.

If your infrastructure was built to accommodate the demand you experienced before your company’s growth, there will always come a point when it’s unable to cope with the heavier workload. Once demand exceeds the capacity of your servers, they’ll collapse, causing downtime that damages your reputation and your bottom line.

So, as demand increases, what are your options?

Wait It Out or Get Ahead

Sometimes, you can’t predict the usage of your software increasing, and you may not know exactly what the capacity of your servers are. That leaves you with two options: wait until you hit capacity and then enhance your infrastructure, or upgrade before the issue occurs.

While you may be reluctant to invest in an infrastructure upgrade before it’s been proven you need one, the alternative — an inconsistent service and frustrated customers — could justify upgrading before capacity issues arise.

Upgrading Your Infrastructure

Once you’ve decided that an upgrade is necessary, whether to serve current need or future-proof against forthcoming demand, you once again have two options:

1. Continue with server-based delivery and simply purchase more servers.
2. Migrate to the freedom of the cloud.

We’d recommend the latter; here’s why.

Making the move from the server room to the cloud will give you additional capacity to deliver a fast and reliable service to your customers, no matter how many there are. That’s because in the cloud you have the option to adjust and scale the capacity of your infrastructure to meet your needs. That flexibility will save you money and improve the quality of service you provide.

If you were to stand by your servers, the cost of running or renting them remains the same whether they’re being used or not. However, the cloud’s flexibility means your capacity — and how much you pay for it — can be scaled to increase during busy times and decrease during quieter periods, so you only ever pay for what you need.

You should also consider the long-term implications of your decision. If capacity continues to increase, can you afford to persist with extending your server room or renting more server space? When does it end?

Ecrebo’s Escape to the Cloud

Just a short time ago, Ecrebo were faced with a capacity conundrum. The data stores for OnPoint, Ecrebo’s point-of-sale software solution, were housed in a traditional colocation data centre, on-premises. However, the company was expanding, and they could tell that demand was soon going to exceed the capacity of their infrastructure.

For Ecrebo to affordably scale their infrastructure while retaining the speed and quality of their real-time data processing, OnPoint needed to leave the server room behind and move to the cloud. That’s where Isotoma stepped in. In just three months, we built a bespoke cloud infrastructure for OnPoint and safely migrated the software’s mountain of data.

With its cloud-based infrastructure, OnPoint now has the stability to deliver the high standard of service their clients expect, no matter how much demand it experiences.

Control Capacity in the Cloud

As your company grows, your infrastructure must keep pace. With servers, that’s not easy, nor is it cheap. In the cloud, you have complete control over your capacity, and you only pay for what you need.

It’s time to leave your servers behind, and we’d love to help. If your future lies in the cloud, and you want to take advantage of the features, benefits, and flexibility of serverless storage, get in touch with the Isotoma team today.