Spurred on by the global pandemic, the demand for cloud continues to grow. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have been the big winners, with AWS even crossing the $10 billion mark. Companies are increasingly realizing the need for cloud infrastructure in remote working scenarios. Yet the move to cloud can be a tricky one, and companies may be resistant to the change, particularly if they have invested heavily in the renewal of their on-premise infrastructure.
Needs, maturity levels and implementation approaches can all impact cloud adoption. Companies that have already renewed their on-premise infrastructure are understandably reluctant to move to the cloud. They have paid a great deal of money for renewal, and migrating to the cloud means they have to invest more. This has resulted in some companies investing slowly in the cloud, because they already have something that is working.
Look to the Benefits of Cloud
Key to this digital transformation is an understanding of the benefits of cloud technologies, guided by a partner with the right expertise and experience to understand a company’s needs. The advantages differ, depending on whether you are looking to move the entire company to the cloud, versus just looking to move a new workload or new projects.
The first benefit of the cloud is that it can reduce the total cost of ownership of your infrastructure, because in the cloud, you can start smaller. This is an elastic infrastructure. If you require greater capacity, more storage or any other unit, you can buy more. The cloud offers many services for many different sectors, from satellites to the internet of things to quantum computing. Renting those services in the cloud is something you can do very easily and more cost-effectively.
The other advantage is the ability to speed up applications or models, achieving a faster time to market. It is also scalable, meaning you easily move from one host and one application to more users and increased capacity.
A decade ago, before cloud, if you needed to deploy your application on production, it was a lengthy process. Now you can deploy to the public cloud many times per day, which is one of the other advantages, as is the reduction in risk. Buying all the infrastructure for on-premise use when you have a new project results in a high infrastructure cost. If the project does not offer return on investment, that cost is lost.
With the cloud you reduce the risk because the contract is per minute, so if something is not working, or is not profitable for the company, you can close the new section or you can choose to invest more money in different things. Companies can save up to 41% in infrastructure costs with a migration to cloud.
Getting the Migration Strategy Right
The biggest challenge is helping companies build the confidence to move more workloads to the cloud. Core to this is a migration strategy that meets the needs of your company and still leverages the benefits of the cloud.
Having the right partner in place, who understands not only cloud but is able to understand your needs, is imperative. Each client has a different approach to moving to the cloud and so you need a partner who can work with you to deliver on those needs.
The pandemic has accelerated the move to the cloud for many companies and demand remains high, but a successful migration requires a considered, strategic approach with a partner who understands the technology and takes into account the maturity level of the company, its size, the needs and the implementation approaches. We foresee even greater interest in cloud migration as the need for the flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness of the cloud is amplified by the ongoing pandemic.
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