Unlock the power of cloud in your business transformation journey

The Cloud is reshaping the way we live and work. At home, the shift away from physical media such as CDs and DVDs has resulted in the widespread use of cloud-based streaming services such as Spotify and Netflix. And at work during a global pandemic, Microsoft’s 365 services and Zoom and Team’s video conferencing services enabled businesses all over the world to successfully pivot to work-from-home strategies.

The driving forces that encourage a move to the cloud often include the following:

Analytics

Every cloud adoption initiative is motivated by a strategic need to keep up with the rapidly changing business environment. Most cloud providers support data weaving tools that make it easier to integrate Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics workflows and take advantage of richer data which helps an organization to make real-time, agile business decisions.

Cost Savings

When you move to the cloud, you no longer have to invest in equipment maintenance, updates, or upgrades; instead, the cloud service provider (CSP) takes care of it. As a result, this decision not only saves you money, but it also allows you to invest more in other aspects of your business.

Business Continuity

Companies can’t afford downtime due to unforeseen disruptions such as a cyber-attack or other catastrophic event, so storing your data in the cloud ensures it’s securely backed up and protected in a safe location. When there has been a breach, every organization’s goal is to resume normal operations as soon as access to the infrastructure, applications and data has been restored. By reducing downtime and lost productivity, an organization is able to minimize the negative impact it will feel due to lost revenue.

Agility

For businesses all over the world, it is critical to enable an agile IT environment because it allows for proactive responses to rapidly changing business needs. Moving to the cloud makes this possible because SaaS technology eliminates the need for traditional application management. As a result, it’s easier to evolve your cloud strategy as business requirements change. However, it is critical to recognize that managing these products in a cloud environment necessitates a new set of IT skills. Furthermore, by enabling real-time responses, organizations experience increased agility, thereby improving both the internal and external customer experience.

Business Growth

One of the most important outcomes of cloud adoption is business growth. If you see business growth as a strategic driver for your company, you’ll need to figure out how you’ll define it. The answer will be determined by the level of maturity within your company and the amount of risk you are willing to take. Based on those responses, you can map out your strategy for achieving that goal (or work with a trusted partner to help you map it out), as well as how you expect cloud technology will support those efforts.

In Conclusion

Before you embark on any new cloud initiative, it is important to first determine which of these five drivers is motivating your decision to migrate to the cloud. Understanding this will be key to helping you prioritize initiatives within your cloud strategy. Doing so will be critical to your success because it constantly focuses activities that satisfy the end goals while creating a framework to better resolve conflicting initiative that might arise.