The 8 benefits of cloud and how you can achieve them for your business

The 8 major business outcomes of the move to cloud 1. Digital Transformation 3. End-to-end Integration However, it is important to recognise that this shift away from legacy IT frameworks to cloudbased, outcome-orientated, digital IT ecosystems is a journey not an endpoint in itself. And this journey to digital transformation is not as simple as just moving to cloud. Your organisation – with its specific organisational challenges, commercial requirements and IT goals – will need a tailored cloud and data strategy that is aligned with your strategic objectives so you can thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s marketplace. So how do you best empower digital transformation in your...
The 8 major business outcomes of the move to cloud 1. Digital Transformation 3. End-to-end Integration However, it is important to recognise that this shift away from legacy IT frameworks to cloudbased, outcome-orientated, digital IT ecosystems is a journey not an endpoint in itself. And this journey to digital transformation is not as simple as just moving to cloud. Your organisation – with its specific organisational challenges, commercial requirements and IT goals – will need a tailored cloud and data strategy that is aligned with your strategic objectives so you can thrive in today’s and tomorrow’s marketplace. So how do you best empower digital transformation in your organisation so that you can continue creating value for your customers and maintain a competitive edge in a digital-first world? Integrating applications, data and infrastructure in the cloud can be a big challenge for businesses. The last thing any business wants is to see its operations hindered by disparate systems that cannot communicate with each other – especially in the age of mobile, automation and IoT. 2. Easy Scalability One thing’s for sure: Your customers’ expectations will not stagnate, so neither should your business. To meet the increasing demands of customers and to take advantage of expanding opportunities, your digital infrastructure and expertise need to scale up, too. Scalability is not just about having more IT, it’s being able to do things faster: launching new products, implementing changes or expanding into new regions. Cloud is a major mechanism for achieving this. Yet, new and old systems must also adhere to regulatory and audit requirements and deliver the tools to provide insights into the audit data. Whatever the business driver, the key question will be what to deploy to get the right mix of cloud services so you can ensure that scaling up improves, rather than inhibits, business opportunities. IT departments want a holistic approach to integration, rather than siloed lines of business deploying solutions without their involvement. What that requires is a coherent catalogue of services and providers that considers the role of various elements of cloud, as well as your legacy infrastructure. This strategy will enable you to create a uniform approach that adheres to clear and definable standards. 4. Robust Security No business wants to see data lost, stolen or compromised. So when it comes to digital transformation, keeping data secure or uncompromised is a critical factor for selecting IT systems. This is all the more pertinent due to the implementation of stringent EU data privacy law, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in 2018. Given the nature of cloud IT, there is a judgement call to make on access to, and availability of, data; in particular, missioncritical or customer data. After all, any loss or manipulation of data can have a lasting impact on customer loyalty, brand reputation, regulatory scrutiny and the bottom line. Empower Growth. The 8 benefits of cloud and how you can achieve them for your business. The 8 major business outcomes of the move to cloud 5. More Control 7. Enhanced Partnerships Moving infrastructure, data and systems to the cloud can seem to be a welcoming prospect. Outsourcing processes away from your organisation allows teams to get on with running business operations. Yet, even with the cloud model, you will still want high levels of control and oversight. Every successful business is always on the lookout for new market opportunities, particularly those presented by industry partners. In the media and telecommunications industries, this might involve creating an ecosystem of tie-ins between hardware manufacturers and content providers. This is not necessarily about control over the actual IT systems. Instead, it is about having more control over applications and workloads that create the business value your business is requiring of the IT department. For instance, being in control of data governance puts you in a better position to prove compliance and generate trust in your brand. The reliance on unseen hands to manage the way your business runs on a day-to-day level would have to be fully scoped out and a trusted relationship developed.? Working in partnership with other players inside and outside your industry allows for a free-flow of ideas and insights from working with a much broader range of customers. 6. Increased Growth A sure way to inhibit growth is by slowing down the time it takes to get new products and services to market, especially in the digital era. The move to cloud is obviously a great way for businesses to ramp up growth. For instance, retailers do not have to limit themselves to selling what is required for the regular weekly shop. Via a branded app they can offer access to syndicated recipes from celebrity chefs, which reduces hassle for consumers while increasing sales from the associated ingredients that they may otherwise not have bought. This increased basket size represents a greater share of wallet. And such digitally inspired revenue growth is not only limited to retailers. 8. Better Collaboration Cloud is also eliminating many of the barriers that have, until now, kept business departments disparate and discordant. Cloud opens up the organisation to more transparency and helps to establish new interconnections. Improving employees’ ability to communicate and share ideas from anywhere and at any time will lead to a rapid increase in productivity. This all sounds good in theory. But what about in practice? How do large organizations with plenty of internal complexity go about making a seamless shift to cloud to empower digital transformation? Empower Growth. The 8 benefits of cloud and how you can achieve them for your business.
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