Gartner projects a 17.5% percent growth in the cloud services industry, amounting to $214.3 billion, in the year 2019. Most CIOs and CTOs are already knee-deep in their cloud adoption journey as part of a comprehensive digital transformation strategy. As cloud is becoming the new norm, born-in-the-cloud companies do appear to have an edge over their older competitors who will inevitably have to undergo the pain of cloud migration. But why even consider forsaking the familiar comfort of on-premises data centres?
Times have changed and so have consumers’ demands. There is a need for fast time-to-market like never before. App modernization, end-to-end visibility, security and the ability to expand as needed are only a few of the many reasons why companies are eager to move to a cloud server at any cost.
Scalability is Significant for Growth
Imagine your application experiencing an unusual growth spurt overnight, and you’re struggling to scale your resources, on-the-go, to meet the rapidly increasing demand. Or perhaps, you want to expand your business to other countries, or even continents, without having to invest in dedicated time, money and human resources required to set up a geographically distributed infrastructure.
The best solution for companies with flexible resource requirements lies in the cloud. As their needs change, companies can easily scale up or scale down their cloud solutions within minutes or even seconds. In fact, cloud servers can also be auto-scaled based on certain conditions like time of the day or your application running out of storage capacity. This ability to meet consumer’s demands as they arise is one of the key drivers of cloud migration.
Cloud Enables App Modernization
In a highly competitive and continuously evolving IT environment, fast delivery is everything. In order to quickly recognize a market gap and deliver ahead of your competitors, you will need to shift your focus from infrastructure management to the actual implementation. Users do not have the patience for a long load time or server downtime anymore; therefore, your infrastructure must always be up-to-date with virtually zero downtime.
With a cloud server comes the ease of leaving updates and security patches to your cloud service provider. While your provider takes care of periodic maintenance, software upgrades and managing backups, you can shift your efforts and resources towards winning clients by targeting actual user needs and focus on perfecting the user experience.
Leveraging Big Data through Cloud Adoption
Data has become the single most powerful weapon for businesses to identify consumer demands and collect user feedback. Information from several sources is collected and analysed through various, cloud-based analytical tools to drive actionable business insights. Big Data involves a massive store of structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. Processing such gigantic volumes of data requires huge computational resources. This is the reason why Big Data and Cloud computing go hand in hand, and companies must shift to a cloud server for collecting, storing and analysing customer data.
Consider Security, Compliance and Disaster Recovery
In modern IT environments, security threats no longer come from the ‘script kiddies’ of the 90s; the attackers are now as sophisticated as the most advanced security teams and even more. Surrounded by these evolving security threats, your in-house security team may not be enough for protecting your resources. On the other hand, all the key cloud providers have invested heavily in protecting their infrastructure against the most sophisticated of attacks. The benefit of having your data stored in a remote location is that you can wipe it off entirely from compromised systems should a need arise.
Data compliance is another important factor for companies working in sectors like healthcare and financial services. The major public cloud service providers are already compliant and shifting to their servers will take an additional burden of ensuring compliance off your shoulders. Not to forget that cloud disaster recovery systems are also way easier to implement, much cheaper and give you great control over your resources.
Cloud Storage is Cheaper in the Long Run
If it’s becoming difficult for you to manage the expenses that come with increasing your on-premises storage capacity, shifting your data to the cloud is a cheaper alternative that can save you the cost of acquiring expensive hardware. Several cloud providers offer a subscription-based pricing model that allows you to pay for only the resources that you use. As your company expands, you can always add more resources either by contacting your vendor or through an online portal.
Promoting a Flexible Work Culture
Moving to a cloud server can allow companies to benefit from remote intelligence and work with geographically distributed teams. Cloud servers allow employees to access work-related resources from any location through the internet. The flexibility to work from anywhere can significantly increase productivity and employee satisfaction. BYOD is becoming a commonly adopted policy. Employees can work from multiple, personal devices without having to copy data back and forth. Since nothing is stored locally on the devices, practically any device can be used for input and output regardless of the location.
Making Room for Innovation and Agility
The list of reasons why you should consider shifting to a cloud server may go on and on. But it is important to realize that going all-in with cloud adoption may not be the most practical option for most of the companies. Perhaps a hybrid cloud is better suited to your company’s needs, or you may benefit from a multi-cloud infrastructure. To assess your unique requirements and to map out an effective cloud migration strategy, you will need to consult an experienced and competent cloud provider. Moving to the cloud doesn’t have to be risky or even disruptive. With the right cloud migration partner on your side, cloud transformation journey could be a smooth and fruitful one.
