Cloud-Strategy For Business: The need of the Hour

In the technology domain, cloud computing has a great deal of appreciation and footing that there is a rapid shifting to the cloud.
 

A cloud-first strategy has become the standard of the day as the user and the service provider are benefited. The primary advantage of the end user is that they can avail premium services at a small amount of market cost and the service provider is able to take advantage of the economies of scale.
 

This post briefs about the cloud computing services and the motivation to choose cloud-strategy for business environment.

Today’s political, economic, and technological landscape calls for delivering extensive and ever-increasing capabilities with fewer resources. The main objective being realizing effectiveness, efficiency, and security, the organization looks for opportunities to transform their way of acquiring, operating, and managing IT.  
 

Cloud computing stands as the best answer to this thirst for IT industry.
 

Cloud Computing, the IT model enables the ubiquitous access to the shared pools of configurable system resources, higher level services that could be provisioned with minimal management effort over the Internet.
 

It could be compared to a public utility as it involves sharing of the resources in order to achieve coherence and economies of scale. Eventually, cloud cut costs and helps the users focus on their core business rather than IT obstacles.
 

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) defines cloud computing as: “A model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on?demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.”

The Federal Cloud Computing Strategy characterizes cloud computing as a: “…profound economic and technical shift (with) great potential to reduce the cost of federal Information Technology (IT) systems while improving IT capabilities and stimulating innovation in IT solutions.

According to a study by the International Data Group,
 

• 69% of businesses are already using cloud technology
• 18% has plans to implement cloud-computing solutions at some point.
• Dell reports that companies that invest in big data, cloud, mobility, and security enjoy up to 53 percent faster revenue growth than their competitors.
• 91% say cloud makes it easy to meet the Government regulations.
• 94% of business witnessed an improvement in security.

Gartner says, “By 2021, more than half of global enterprises already using cloud today will adopt an all-in cloud strategy”.

In brief, cloud computing fulfills several IT objectives in a more cost-effective, secure, and efficient manner.
 

What instigated the IT to choose cloud-strategy forbusiness environment? A few of the reasons are briefed below:

1.Efficiency:

Adoption of cloud helps to enhance the productivity in application development, management, network, and end?user devices. It improves the utilization of the assets and accelerates the system consolidation.
 

On-demand purchasing pay-as-you-go pricing model for services cuts the investment cost. And also, it decreases the physical and energy footprint.
 

2. Agility:

PaaS, IaaS, SaaS “as-a-Service” could be purchased [as per use-cases] from trusted cloud providers, and services could be implemented instantaneously. That is, it meets the urgent needs of the clients and the agencies.
 

As the data could be captured, stored, and published simultaneously, the time consumed is less to reach the users. Moreover, the high availability and redundancy of cloud computing architectures give better options for operations continuity and disaster recovery.
 

3. Reduced IT Costs:

Cloud computing reduces the managing and maintaining costs. The cost of the system upgrades, purchase of expensive systems, pay wages for the staff, consumption of energy, and,  etc., could be highly reduced.
 

Once in the cloud, it is easy to access the company"s data from anywhere and anytime. This will save time and money to be invested in project start-ups.
 

4. Security:

The cloud service providers are always engaged in monitoring the security and are also efficient than that of the conventional in-house system. By keeping the data off-site, it is possible to avoid internal theft data too.
 

And, the system could be regularly be updated with the latest technology depending on the service providers. The update includes latest versions of software, server upgrade, and computer processing power.
 

Recommended for You 7 Top Cloud Security Challenges and its Solutions (Infographics)  

5. Flexibility:

Cloud computing facilitates the work practices of the employees flexible. The employees are able to access their data and able to work from home, holiday, or via commute, provided there is an Internet connection.
 

Moreover, it is possible to access the data when you are off-site by getting connected to the virtual office in a quick and easy manner. It increases the ability to communicate with the employees, third parties, and the contractors.  
 

6. Innovativeness:

As the asset ownership gets shifted to service management, the organization could get linked to emerging technologies easily, and encourage to tap the entrepreneurial culture.
 

It enables the ability to create and exploit the large data sets, search large data sets, couple the data sets of varied systems, facilitates cross-system data search and exploitation as well.
 

7. Quality Control:

In a cloud-based system, the documents are stored in a single format at one place. The concerned employees are benefited with the consistency of data as everyone gets access to the same information, with an updated record of revisions and upgrades simultaneously.
 

Conversely, the information management in silos may lead to confusion or diluted data. There is a risk of losing the data stored locally. It avoids human error and carries the uniform data.
 

Cloud consumers are mentioned below:

Moving forward, Cloud is not a one-size-fits-all solution. It has to be tailored according to the industry specification and needs. 9 of the most popular industries that are adopting cloud aggressively has been noted down here.
 

9 Businesses that are benefited from Cloud Computing:
 

1. Automotive:

Store inventory and additional data in one easily-accessible location, making possible for the clients to search inventories easily.
 

2. Education:

Get access to the latest technologies at a faster rate, collaborate with the students, assign works, projects, and so forth are made easy.
 

3. Finance:

Security concern is addressed by data encryption, Tier 3, class 1 data centers and limited access to the credentials of the confidential data.
 

4. Healthcare:

Data should be compliant with the various healthcare regulations like the HIPAA. The industry may make referrals, complete patient history, and improve collaboration.
 

5. Insurance:

Communication within the channels, setting up of the customer portals, tracking of the customers’ accounts and status speeds up the whole process.  
 

6. Productivity:

The managing of the diverse locations and the supply chains require large and intricate database applications, which is done easily by cloud adoption.
 

7. Real Estate:

Cloud makes marketing execution simple and streamlined. Maintenance of the clients’ contact, getting referrals, and closing of deals are made easy.
 

8. Legal:

The data could be stored in large quantities for a longer time, accessible and secure with most advanced backup.
 

9. Non-Profit:

The non-profit organizations have a limited budget and staying updated with the latest technologies is difficult. Cloud adoption makes this job a fair deal.
 

Wrapping Up:

As mentioned earlier, several industries are moving their processes and systems into the cloud. As it is becoming the prime source of competitive advantage, even the professionals need to tag their resume with cloud certifications. 
 

As the featured benefits of adopting cloud strategy for business are revealed, let us move further and know how the IT professionals can update themselves with the cloud knowledge via training and certifications.
 

A few of the most popular cloud certifications are mentioned below.
 

• AWS-Certified Solutions Architect
• MCSE: Cloud platform and Infrastructure
• VMware Certifications
• Google Certified professional-Cloud Architect
• IBM Cloud Certifications
• Salesforce Certifications
• Cisco Certifications
   

It is recommended to choose and earn any of these coveted cloud certifications to gain a position in the cloud.

“Cloud computing is increasingly becoming a vehicle for next-generation digital business, as well as for agile, scalable and elastic solutions,” says David Mitchell Smith, vice president, and Gartner Fellow.

“CIOs and other IT leaders need to constantly adapt their strategies to leverage cloud capabilities.”