Cloud computing refers to running workloads remotely over the internet in a commercial provider’s datacenter. It works via a virtualized pool of resources available on-demand. It allows enterprises to curtail high-cost purchases in hardware, software or on-premise datacenters as cloud allows them to pay as they go instead of investing in on-premise servers.
Cloud has gained prominence because businesses can adapt faster to the dynamic business environment due to its agility, flexibility, and cost optimization. In an Intelligent Industry paradigm, with companies focusing on digitizing their businesses with new approaches to technology, design, data, and communication to expand business, cloud will be key to progress.
Cloud computing started gaining huge momentum in the past decade. As per Gartner, companies spent $230 billion on cloud infrastructure in 2019, with estimated YoY growth of 20% each year. With the ability to reduce system build times from days to hours, the investment is worth it.
There are three categories in cloud: Public Cloud, where resources are available over public internet; Private Cloud, where resources are available to select users over private network; and Hybrid Cloud, which leverages the benefits of both – and has emerged as an industry gamechanger.
Hybrid cloud helps deploy a website on public cloud to leverage on scalability, as well as deploy the database on private cloud to comply with specific data privacy norms. Also, new applications and workloads can be designed by leveraging cloud systems for quicker go-to-market, thereby striking a balance between public and private cloud platforms.
Given these benefits, hybrid cloud architecture is becoming the norm. Today, all hyperscale service providers have developed their own Hybrid Cloud offerings –Amazon’s AWS outpost, Google’s Anthos, and Microsoft’s Azure Arc.
The reasons for the sudden rise of hybrid cloud are three-fold:
- Service providers like Amazon and Microsoft have invested heavily in setting up availability zones across the globe, which meets the needs of global enterprises. These have enabled end-to-end proposition in bridging legacy systems and cloud.
- Organizations migrating to cloud have benefited from its elasticity, enabling them to use only those resources they need now and scale up later when business ramps up. This is now a strong business case for CXOs to accelerate their cloud agenda.
- The variety of platform-based service provided, which allows agile development of features and enhanced go-to-market capability, makes cloud adoption an attractive proposition for enterprises. Mapping of cloud benefits to enterprise business requirements has become straightforward, thereby strengthening the business case for such transformation.
Of late, the enormous explosion of data has created the need for building real-time analytics systems anchored on big data and cloud. The demands of hyper-personalisation require Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to be applied on enterprise, supplier, and customer data to forecast and optimise supply chain or demand factors.
Agile methodology in software development, combined with the need to build anytime-anywhere technology, has pivoted enterprises towards “Cloud First” strategy. Clearly, enterprises that embrace cloud and digital transformation are better prepared to handle crisis situations, while others may have no option but to embark on rapid cloudification.
Take COVID, for instance. As companies switched to cloud-based applications, it clearly illustrated the strength of cloud in enabling remote work because the agility offered is similar to on-premise infrastructure. For example, as enterprises were forced to rapidly deploy tools like Teams, the shift to hybrid-enabled operations – which normally took about 4-6 months – was executed in only a few weeks.
Not all enterprise systems are cloud ready, and hence the need to strike the right balance. For instance, enterprises may have invested in their own datacenters or in private clouds with certain lock-in period due to capex, license, or contractual reasons. Else, there may be some legacy applications and hardware that cannot be seamlessly migrated to public cloud.
In the era of cloud, cost optimization will be crucial for adoption. By moving to an opex model, enterprises can address their technical limitations via hybrid cloud adoption. Also, security will be key to cloud adoption. As services get added, it should be constantly monitored across infrastructure, network, apps, and data security.Integrated solutions that seamlessly manage multi-cloud or hybrid environments, bundled with holistic security solutions, should address most security concerns as they emerge.
In today’s age of digital transformation, cloud is clearly the way forward.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TTE staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
