Deploying cloud as your engine for never-seen-before growth

India is at the cusp of a digital revolution. Key drivers include the Government’s Digital India and Make in India initiatives and digitization of services in sectors like retail, banking and education.  These factors are providing the right platform for fostering cloud computing as an enabler of transformation. What’s more – organizations are now starting to treat cloud as a business predicament as opposed to being just an IT solution. The changing technology landscape, volatile economy and dynamic business needs have urged enterprises to adopt a ‘do more with less’ approach, as pointed out by PWC (in a recent survey). Since 2013, analysts have anticipated the growing use of cloud computing to support IT and strategic business work streams. The proof of the pudding lies in industry biggies investing heavily in cloud technologies.

Adoption of cloud directly proportional to business growth

In a nutshell, enterprises that adopt cloud are able to streamline processes, and free up capital, while giving the necessary flexibility to meet evolving operational needs. In other words, by adopting a ‘cloud first’ strategy for their core business applications, enterprises are set to facilitate faster ROI and stay agile to adopt to the business dynamics.

In a recent IDG survey, almost half of all respondents (46%) said deploying cloud-based business applications is essential or very important to their expansion strategy. They feel that this is because it lets them focus on moving business strategy forward, while their cloud vendors take on some of the burden of finding specialized IT skills, meeting complex compliance requirements, and keeping systems properly maintained and upgraded to the latest version.

Keeping pace with cloud trends

As the cloud market takes center stage, a number of trends are emerging that are likely to further accelerate cloud adoption. One is the adoption of hybrid architectures that offer flexible deployment options for core Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and edge applications. Take for example a manufacturer that is looking at shifting a corporate ERP solution running on premise to support a new plant in some distant location. With today’s flexible cloud ERP technologies, they can now choose an appropriate cloud ERP solution and support a new location in weeks without risking business integrity.

Gartner predicts that nearly half of large organizations will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017. This is predominantly since hybrid approach allows companies to select focused edge applications that extend core ERP capabilities on cloud while maintaining some legacy systems on premise. Additionally, hybrid is becoming a popular option for organizations looking to test the cloud.

Innovating for the future

In addition to the emergence of new approaches to cloud adoption, the technology has also essentially provided a huge springboard for innovation. An apt example would be that of big data; cloud computing places a crucial role in big data analytics due to its application sharing and cost effective properties. With 2.5 quintillion bytes created every day, companies are sitting on a treasure trove of data. Data is exploding at an unprecedented pace. Ninety percent of all of the data in the world was created in just the past two years. Every year from now, that data will double. The relationship between enterprise success and the optimization and implementation of data science is already mutually symbiotic. The successful companies of the future will be the ones that turn big data into smart data, and build that data into the core of their businesses.

Conclusion

To drive agility, simplify IT infrastructure complexities and reduce total cost of ownership, industry driven specialized cloud solutions can play a strategic role to drive business momentum. Competitive advantage lies with those that deploy highly flexible cloud technologies with industry-specific functionalities. This will consequently spur transformation in the way businesses address customer needs, with explosion of ancillary developments such as big data, analytics, etc. while employing social.

Authored by: Bino George

Head Pre-sales, Infor