“Why are we moving to the cloud?” It’s a common question for business owners. Business transformations that are supported by cloud adoption can be driven by various reasons. It’s likely that several motivations apply at the same time:
Top reasons for moving to the cloud:
Critical business events:
- Datacenter exit
- Merger, acquisition, or divestiture
- Reduction in capital expenses
- Response to regulatory compliance changes
- Reduction of disruptions and improvement of IT stability
Migration:
- Cost savings
- Reduction in vendor or technical complexity
- Optimization of internal operations
- Increase in business agility
- Preparation for new technical capabilities
- Scaling to meet market demands
- Integration of a complex it portfolio
Innovation:
- Preparation for new technical capabilities
- Improved customer experiences and engagements
- Transformation of products or services
- Market disruption with new products or services
Key benefits of moving to the cloud:
Here are some possible outcomes by category that a company can expect once it is decided to move to the cloud:
1. Fiscal outcomes: Financial or fiscal performance is the cleanest business outcome for many business leaders
- Revenue increases: With global scale and digital reach, the cloud can help businesses to increase revenues from existing revenue streams.
- Cost reduction: Cloud computing can reduce capital expenses for hardware and software, setting up datacenters, running on-site datacenters, and so on
- Cost avoidance: Terminating a datacenter can also provide cost avoidance, by preventing future refresh cycles. A refresh cycle is the process of buying new hardware and software to replace aging on-premises systems. This allows a CFO to remove planned future spend from long-term financial forecasts. It differs from cost reduction, generally focusing on a future budget that has not been fully approved yet.
2. Agility outcomes: The ability to respond to and drive market change quickly is the fundamental measure of business agility.
- Provision time: After cloud migration, IT can more easily enable self-service provisioning, allowing the business to scale in hours.
3. Reach outcomes: In a constantly shrinking market, global reach can be measured by compliance in geographies that are relevant to the business. Cloud solutions move the cost of globalization to the cloud provider.
- Global access: Expanding into a new market can be one of the most valuable business outcomes. The ability to quickly deploy resources in market without a longer-term commitment allows sales and operations leaders to explore options that wouldn’t have been considered in the past.
- Data sovereignty: Operating in new markets introduces additional governance constraints. Azure provides compliance offerings that help customers meet compliance obligations across regulated industries and global markets
4. Performance outcomes: Performance and reliability are assumed. In today’s technological society, customers assume that applications will perform well and always be available. Transform your business and reduce costs with an energy-efficient infrastructure that spans more than 100 highly secure facilities worldwide, linked by one of the largest networks on earth.
- Reliability: Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive, because data can be mirrored at multiple redundant sites on the cloud provider’s network.
5. Sustainability goals: Cloud computing can support your organization to reduce carbon emissions, use resources more efficiently, and lessen your environmental footprint. Microsoft has focused on these four areas:
- Carbon: Cutting energy consumption across corporate offices, charging carbon tax to business divisions, and using cloud-powered technology to lower emissions.
- Ecosystem: Making a commitment to green datacenters and purchasing of 1.1 billion kilowatt-hours of green energy.
- Water: Reducing use intensity and investing in technology for managing water.
- Waste: Practicing responsible sourcing, recycling, and disposal; using software and technology to make buildings more efficient.
That’s why I’d like to offer you a FREE Cloud Readiness Assessment to show you there IS a better way to upgrade your computer network AND to demonstrate how a truly competent IT consultant can guide your company to greater profits and efficiencies, help you be more strategic and give you the tools and systems to fuel growth.
