Cloud computing has opened up a new world of IT infrastructure that poses many advantages for organizations such as enhanced accessibility, scalability, cost efficiency and security.
Let us take cloud based access workflows for example, they offer many advantages over traditional self-hosted access workflows. The biggest bullet point in favor of cloud based access workflows and all cloud based products is they are accessible from anywhere at any time. It removes the restrictions of having to be present in the office to work. In today’s business environment, employees often take business trips or may need to work from home – this is now all possible with the cloud. The convenience that cloud based solutions offer to any organization is undeniable. Many times, organizations can have people working from home, afterhours or from a hotel room on the other side of the world. With users being able to access applications and information anywhere at any time, issues are mitigated where something or someone critical might be needed but is unable to access the application due to their location.
Another great feature of cloud based solutions is scalability and cost. Scalability and cost are important factors for all organizations not just small organizations that are looking for explosive growth. By using cloud based solutions scalability is not an issue, as you do not have to worry about adding additional servers and other specialized equipment that might be necessary to run your service, this is all handled by the application provider. Additionally, your provider will be in charge of, or offer things, such as maintenance, support and setup costs included with the subscription thus saving money and reducing your costs.
Security is probably one of the things companies are most worried about these days in the wake of large scale hacks that have happened recently. One of the biggest attack vectors is former employees, which is why it is extremely important to make sure there are no holes on that side. By using a cloud based solution that integrates with Active Directory this is not an issue. Most cloud-based access workflows offer easy Role Based Access Control (RBAC) by linking directly to your Active Directory environment via LDAP. This allows you to assign Active Directory groups to roles in your cloud solution making it easy to de-authorize people as needed. Since all logins are controlled by your Active Directory serve,r once a user is disabled in there or removed from a group there they will lose all their roles and access. This is convenient for system administrators, as they do not have to go out and touch multiple systems in order to make sure an account is completely disabled.
Therefore, cloud based solutions offer the great accessibility, scalability, cost efficiency and security allowing you to worry about running your business instead of what is wrong with the server today. Also in the same vein using authentication methods such as Active Directory LDAP, allows you the peace of mind knowing that former employees will not have access to the system.