Off To The Cloud With Digital Transformation

Digital transformation is no longer an option. In fact, it’s a prerequisite to organisational resilience, success and your ability to comfortably pivot in an ever-changing world.

With the prevalence and unprecedented growth of technology acting as a catalyst to digitisation, there’s no better time than the present to embrace the cloud and all of its glory.

Now, more than ever, this necessary shift in technology and service is disrupting businesses in the most positive way:

• Digital transformation investments are set to amount to almost £5,23 trillion, between 2020 and 2023 alone.
• Enterprises that have undergone digital transformation are predicted to account for £39.6 trillion of the global nominal GDP in 2023.

There are an abundance of benefits that can come out of digitally transforming your business.

You can have recommendation or prediction engines like Netflix. Or simple, yet ingenious chatbots to deal with a multitude of customer journeys. You could even get process automation throughout your entire organisation to cut costs and speed-up delivery.

With digital transformation, the choices are abundant.

But first, you need to consider your existing infrastructure.

 

Legacy Tech Doesn’t Cut It In 2022 

 

In order to fully embrace the new, it requires a re-evaluation of the old.

Most companies still have antiquated IT systems and are dependent on technology that can no longer serve them.

The big problem with relying on outdated, obsolete technology is that you fall behind. You end up slower than your competition. Unable to keep up with change and vulnerable to threat.

The term ‘legacy’ describes these outdated and inefficient technologies, systems or infrastructures.

Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a legacy product or system is one that is no longer available to buy or no longer used very often, but that is still used by some people or companies”.

In relation to IT systems and infrastructure, having any form of legacy technology will ultimately act as a hindrance to the longevity and potential growth of any business.

With outdated technology, you run the risk of falling behind, losing out on missed opportunities and laying waste to valuable resources. Legacy technology simply doesn’t work. And the advantages that come with Cloud don’t compare.

In fact, the stats speak for themselves:

• A study on the cost of maintaining legacy systems in the US revealed that ten of the government’s legacy systems cost about £255 million a year to operate and maintain.
• Stats have also revealed that banks and insurance companies dedicate upwards of 75% of their IT budgets to preserving legacy systems.
• To add insult to injury, legacy systems can cost an organisation up to a staggering 15% budget increase every year for maintenance.

 

The Cloud: Your Key To Digital Longevity

 

To have a basic understanding of the Cloud, it’s important that we establish definitions for a few key terms.

The Cloud – is essentially a collection of IT services (servers, software, databases) that exist on the internet. While these servers exist in data centres across the world, they can be accessed and managed by users at any given time and in any given place.

Cloud migration – is a company’s decision to move their data, software and IT infrastructure to one of these cloud ecosystems. This way, they have open access to unlimited storage and greater flexibility, security, compute, as well as secure backup

Cloud providers – are third party companies that provide cloud computing services.They offer customers a cloud-based platform that replicates and improves standard IT infrastructure, practices and even software.

CloudOps – is enacted once you’ve migrated to the cloud. Your next step is to manage, maintain and optimise your new environment for optimal results. CloudOps is essentially the process behind making your new investment perform at its absolute best.

How Well Does The Cloud Work?

To begin unpacking the cloud, we need to answer a very simple, but important question:

Does it work? (And if so, how well?)

These facts might clear things up a bit:

• Gartner predicts the public Cloud market to reach over $623.3 billion by the year 2023. This means that more enterprises and SMBs are investing in Cloud technology and understand the positive effect it will have across industries.
• Forbes cites advantages such as significant cost reductions, improved scalability and faster innovation as a few of the basic benefits of Cloud technology. That’s right, only a few of the basic benefits.
• Accenture indicates that businesses that take a strategic approach to new technology achieve more than twice the revenue growth of those that don’t. A strategic approach entails using Cloud in a way that tailors it to your company’s specific needs.

 

Still not completely convinced?

• The Cloud is also environmentally friendly. That’s right. Cloud technology will significantly reduce carbon emissions, save massive amounts of electricity and heavily cut back on resource usage (hardware, facilities, housing).
• The Cloud will save money in more than one way. Besides cutting down on hardware, labour and maintenance costs, overall productivity is also improved and you save huge amounts on capital expenses with affordable pricing models.
• Security on the Cloud is also extremely safe and constantly improving. Cloud providers employ the best security professionals to ensure that your data is encrypted and kept safe from cyber attacks. Gartner even predicts that by 2025, 99% of Cloud security failures will be the user’s fault.

 

Get Started On Your Cloud Migration Journey

Every business will inevitably undergo some form of digital transformation. It’s simply a matter of when.

And the cloud, with all of its many advantages, is essential to that journey.

To remain competitive, to evolve and to innovate in an age that puts technology at its core is critical to any organisation. While it might appear to be a fairly complicated and uncomfortable shift to take – you can rest assured that this isn’t necessarily the case.

You need to either have the right talent, or work together with the right people that understand the value, importance and impact of your data, as well as the role that it plays in your success.