This is saying something, given that COVID-19 caused the steepest economic contraction in contemporary history. According to McKinsey, by 2024, businesses expect 80% of their IT hosting budget to go towards the cloud.
There’s a reason analysts and market observers are so bullish on cloud computing. The technology has become a by-word for scalable computing on demand. It’s become so integral to the way businesses operate that it’s not just about enabling business processes and efficiency. Enterprise leaders now look at their cloud investments as genuine competitive differentiators for them.
However, not everyone is on board with this view. A number of businesses are reluctant to bite the bullet when it comes to cloud migration. Some of the common reasons for this include:
- They prefer in-house solutions: Some enterprises believe that hosting their data internally gives them better access to technical support staff and avoids the unpredictability associated with outsourced solutions. Enterprises may also have regulatory or compliance requirements that are not possible to achieve in the cloud.
- They have legacy systems: Many businesses have made large investments in legacy systems and are reluctant to make a change. Migrating to a new technology or provider is often thought of as time-consuming, risky and contributing to productivity issues.
- There are too many options to choose from: With the boom in cloud computing, there has been a proliferation of cloud provider options as well. Businesses look to trust their cloud providers as long-term partners, and with so many options on the market, they’re not sure where to begin.
The fact is, most of these reservations stem from inadequate knowledge about technology and the migration process. With the right advice and partner, digital transformation for businesses is a cinch. It can future-proof your business and improve productivity across the board.
Types of cloud computing platforms include:
- Software as a Service (SaaS): Solutions delivered in a way such that they need internet access to function, often as part of a subscription service.
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): In this case you ‘rent’ the infrastructure—or server space—that you need to run your business.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS): Developers can also build on existing solutions to create their own cloud computing software.
With the right technology framework, your business can save costs, improve revenue, and significantly improve its bottom line.
How the right technology framework can help your business
Revenue growth occurs when you are able to launch your products more rapidly because the cloud can provide what you need in minutes, scaling to meet demand. You don’t need to take time to build out infrastructure ahead of demand, and you no longer have potential supply chain and internal IT effort associated with infrastructure. Here’s how selecting the right technology framework can help your business:
1. Faster time to market
A competitive and dynamic marketplace requires an agile approach for businesses to succeed. Moving to the cloud can help you deploy your applications and services much faster. When you only rent the server space you need without buying it, you can operate effortlessly without having to put time into manually scaling your infrastructure.
You can test and release new applications with tremendous ease and speed. On the cloud, solutions and services are usually spread across multiple servers. This means that if one server isn’t available, data can still be accessed on other servers.
Cloud computing also boosts your processing power and gives you more market uptime. With the cloud, you deploy services and applications in hours instead of weeks. Not only does this save you valuable time, it can also give you a head start over other competitors and lead to more business.
2. Cost savings
Creating and running an in-house data center solution is expensive. You have to invest in equipment, in-house support staff and power. When you host it with a cloud provider, you free up your IT team to spend time on tasks more pressing than having to fix recurring technical glitches.
Moreover, the cloud is flexible. Auto-scaling is a great way to optimize limited resources. During peak load times, your cloud can automatically assign more space and processing power for your applications and scale it back down when usage is normalized. This basically means that you pay only for what you use. The approach helps you make the savings you need while still seamlessly catering to customer demand and internal needs.
3. Agility and flexibility
Cloud systems are based on the very principle of agility. They help you save an incredible amount of time on manual, repetitive tasks. You can easily set up processes and a workflow to automate actions. Incidentally, this also eliminates human error and guarantees accuracy.
Moreover, with managed cloud services, your team doesn’t need to be on-site to deal with technical server issues. Your cloud provider helps you with this. If you had in-house hosting, it might take you weeks to provision new servers if you needed them. Alternatively, companies can leverage cloud plug-and-play solutions to create capacity and support on demand. The business efficiency this creates for you and the monetary value of time saved is significant.
4. Data security
This tends to be another big reason businesses hesitate to move to the cloud. They believe using third-party cloud providers can compromise their data security. Ironically enough, moving to the cloud can actually improve cybersecurity for your organization. Businesses with legacy systems often struggle to handle security issues in-house. For one thing, sourcing the right cybersecurity experts is hard. Most cloud providers, on the other hand, follow strict data security protocols and have the right technical expertise on hand to deal with potential issues.
With the cloud, you also don’t have to worry about lost company laptops and compromising sensitive data. So long as you have an internet connection you can readily access your data on the cloud.
The benefits of cloud computing such as agility, scalability, elasticity, and reliability allow you to respond at the pace that the 24/7 digital economy requires.
According to McKinsey, with the right approach, companies stand to unlock some $1 trillion in business value through cloud adoption. Most enterprises today recognize the business advantages of cloud computing. For them, migrating to the cloud is a question of when, not if. Organizations that haven’t yet made the shift may find that they’ll have to implement cloud computing simply to compete and stay relevant, rather than outperform their peers.
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Aaron Smith
Aaron is an LA-based content strategist and consultant in support of STEM firms and medical practices. He covers industry developments and helps companies connect with clients. In his free time, Aaron enjoys swimming, swing dancing, and sci-fi novels.
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