Cloud is rapidly becoming the core platform for adding innovation and business value to an organisation. We are often overlooking some of the more obvious places where cloud can have a much bigger and immediate impact on IT productivity. Areas such as mobile solutions, the Internet of Things and cognitive computing can revolutionise the business processes.
So where is the cloud likely to have the biggest impact on IT productivity in 2016? We have identified the following business cases where cloud can provide a step change in efficiency and effectiveness, enabling business and IT leaders to not only improve IT productivity but seize the opportunity to progress their enterprise capabilities and their personal careers.
1. Making mergers and acquisitions seamless
In the intense negotiations around mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, cloud services might not be top of mind. However, they can make these processes much more painless in a number of ways.
They can help organisations to realise synergy benefits quicker, simplify integration accelerating the change programme, reduce costs through efficiencies, mitigate costly migration investments and encourage financial flexibility.
Any merger or acquisition is a critical business moment with complex processes to be negotiated, so it’s worth looking at how these can be simplified.
2. Preparing for the unexpected
A systems failure or security breach could hit at any time and while preparing for the unexpected may seem an impossible task, a lack of sufficient testing is often to blame.
Testing via the cloud has a range of benefits including rapid access to resources, cloning and provisioning, shared access to testing resources and an expanded range of tests that can be covered, which can be useful for simulating the unexpected demands created by a malicious attack.
[easy-tweet tweet=”Testing via the cloud has a range of benefits including rapid access to resources…” hashtags=”cloud, security”]
Leaders should start by assessing their current test practices and services against the cloud testing possibilities available – which could help the business to be better prepared in the event of an incident.
3. Building an agile edge
Customer expectations are ever-growing and as such, businesses are under constant pressure to provide continually improved customer experiences. This requires a systematic and iterative approach to leveraging a range of technologies – meaning fast, agile development is required, as well as rapid access to new innovations.
Business leaders are coming to realise that cloud enables a culture change to design-first thinking and agile practices – enabling them to better manage unpredictable demands.
4. Increasing IT efficiency
Business leaders responsible for IT are launching cloud-based transformation programmes to make a step change in IT productivity and increase the velocity of new function delivery.
Cloud technology models provide well documented and ready to use, standardised IT services which allow organisations to focus on the service rather than the technology details. Increasingly, IT leaders are starting to review their existing systems to assess which can be moved to cloud technologies unchanged, and which require re-platforming, reworking or replacement.
5. Addressing privacy concerns
With the proliferation of data and increasingly connected systems, today’s business leaders are faced with mounting regulatory requirements, putting growing pressure on IT systems. Failure to meet these requirements can have critical business impact.
One solution business leaders are looking to in order to manage this is moving to a private cloud – dedicated to their organisation only, enabling greater control and privacy.
6. Implementing business transformation Â
Whether the business is responding to a perceived competitive threat, implementing a major new programme, or appointing a new executive, business change is an ideal time to consider the value of cloud services.
[easy-tweet tweet=”#Cloud services simplify collaboration with partners, provide a framework for developing innovative ideas and enable innovative ideas to be rapidly deployed and scaled up in response to changes in demand”]
Cloud services simplify collaboration with partners, provide a framework for developing innovative ideas and enable innovative ideas to be rapidly deployed and scaled up in response to changes in demand – making business change a much more seamless, painless process.
As these business cases demonstrate, business leaders are already recognising the power of the cloud and the opportunities it provides across various disparate functions. As we look forward to the rest of 2016, the cloud will only become more vital to organisations looking to revolutionise their IT operations, providing the IT department the opportunity to demonstrate its value beyond a support function to a driver of business change.
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