Part 1: An increasing demand for cloud computing
Making the digital shift has always been of key importance, but even more so in the last few months. As organizations across different verticals navigate a new landscape post-pandemic, it has become critical to reevaluate priorities and strategies for digital adoption.
But enabling digital transformation requires a solid foundation, and cloud computing plays an integral role in this regard. The cloud enables the on-demand availability of resources to provide storage, security, analytics, and other functionalities over a network. To put it simply, it allows you to store and access data over the internet. Without this technology, it would be challenging (if not impossible) to allow remote work and provide online business offerings.
It’s not surprising then that cloud demand has dramatically increased in wake of the pandemic. According to the 2020 Flexera State of the Cloud report, 59% of enterprises expect higher than usual cloud usage due to the impact of COVID-19. Additionally, organizations report being over budget for cloud spending by 23% on average, and they expect cloud spend to increase 47% in the next year.
What the Cloud offers
Aside from facilitating digital transformation, cloud adoption comes with a slew of benefits for enterprises:
Scalability
The Cloud allows organizations to quickly scale up or down computing resources depending on business requirements. For example, when demand is low, you can automatically decrease resources and provision for extra resources when demand is high—ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery. This way, your organization is more dynamic, and you can easily pivot business processes as needed. This is something that is difficult to implement when using on-premise infrastructure.
Flexibility
Companies around the world have been forced to enable work-from-home almost overnight. Unfortunately, 4 in 10 employees say they’re not equipped with the technology needed to work from home. The cloud allows data and files to be accessed from any place and any time, so operations can continue whether employees are onsite or offsite.
Reduced costs
Cloud services reduce the unnecessary costs involved in buying and managing IT infrastructure. With storage and functionalities in the cloud, your company does not need to worry about maintaining, upgrading, or repairing hardware. What’s more, you may also see cost savings because of lower energy consumption, fewer time delays, and improved efficiency.
Adopting cloud technologies—and in turn implementing digital transformation—can make or break a company’s success during and after the pandemic. Ultimately, companies lacking the tools to enable digital work and interactions will struggle to adapt.
In Part 2, we’ll focus on cloud computing for analytics and cover the benefits of deploying analytics in the cloud.
