If all you want to get out of cloud is to lower your IT costs and reduce the workload on your support team, you’re thinking too small. The better reason to use cloud is to drive your digital transformation project. Here’s how using cloud can help you reinvent your business along with your IT:
1. Cloud makes IT agile so your business can be agile. Making changes to IT in your data center is a time-consuming process. Purchases need to be approved and hardware needs to be received, configured, and deployed. Unless you have a lot of spare capacity sitting idle, reacting to new opportunities can’t happen until the new resources are in place.
With cloud, new resources are always available. Self-service in the cloud means anyone who needs new resources can access them without delay; automatic scaling means applications can even access resources without needing someone to request them. In addition, the new resources include new technology, because cloud providers offer a far wider array of hardware, software, and development tools than you can maintain onsite. If a developer thinks a new technology is the right choice, they have immediate access to test it out.
2. Cloud lets you focus on business rather than technology. Much of your infrastructure support in the cloud is provided by the cloud provider, including a lot of the critical security issues. This means your technology team can stop focusing on technical fundamentals and start focusing on business fundamentals. The insight into your business processes, problems, and opportunities is what distinguishes your technology team from the technology team across the street. Freeing them from routine maintenance allows them to use their insight into your business to use technology creatively and drive business success.
3. Cloud enables shorter development cycles. Agility in the cloud doesn’t come just from using self-service to speed up equipment provisioning. Cloud platforms are ideally suited for the devops style of release management, enabling you to rapidly push new versions into production. You can deploy new versions on new infrastructure while maintaining previous versions on existing infrastructure to support users who can’t upgrade or to provide an easy fallback option in case problems develop. In addition, because cloud allows files to be accessed from anywhere, your team can work collaboratively more easily, also enabling faster development.
4. Cloud unlocks your data. One of the reasons analytics projects were limited before cloud was that managing large volumes of data was difficult. Cloud provides nearly unlimited storage capability, along with analytics tools that let you work with that data rather than simply preserving it. These machine learning and artificial intelligence-based applications help you uncover the patterns hidden by the volume of data and generate insights to make your strategic decision-making process smarter.
5. Cloud allows you to collaborate with partners. Along with supporting employees in their collaboration, cloud lets you share data and collaborate more easily with your partners. Through better communication and better understanding, you’re able to develop new products and new processes that result in better business outcomes.
Have you succeeded in transforming your business with cloud? VAST IT Services helps companies achieve their transformation by creating an IT strategy that leverages cloud and other technology to reinvent how they do business. Contact us to learn more about why cloud is a key technology to propel your business to a successful future.
Continue Your Digital Transformation Success with Additional Cloud Resources:
Don’t Just Do Cloud. Do Cloud Right with a Plan.
Build Your Business on Cloud to Achieve True Digital Transformation
