Leveraging cloud solutions for competitive advantage

For success, establish a specialised cloud and data organisation to address specific challenges with a comprehensive strategy.

A cloud strategy is a concise viewpoint on the role of cloud computing in an organisation. According to Gartner, it highlights the extent of operations in the cloud and its purpose. The surge in demand for cloud solutions originated with retailers and consumer goods companies, who showed the world the power of the cloud and what it has to offer. Other companies strategised to ensure uninterrupted availability of content by fast-tracking content delivery to end consumers, illustrating the scalability of content distribution.

This trend accelerated during the pandemic, as businesses transitioned to cloud infrastructure to maintain connectivity amid physical restrictions. This shift proved advantageous for companies established during the pandemic, where the lack of physical interactions paved the way for more contactless relationships through cloud ecosystems. This further enabled employees across the globe to connect through a simple broadband network.

Engineering firms, positioned as service integrators, find a well-defined cloud strategy essential for establishing themselves in a highly competitive technological landscape, offering clarity to client enterprises seeking suitable partners for their ventures.

A robust cloud strategy is critical in the current business landscape, especially as data-driven real-time decision-making increasingly takes centre stage.

The power of informed solutions

A 2023 HFS Horizons survey report indicates that the top two problems digital engineering services companies are asked to solve are accelerating speed to market for new products and services, and increasing operational efficiency.

The foundation to address both these problem statements lies in defining a solid cloud strategy and executing it successfully. This execution enables service employees to access data and applications at scale from anywhere using any device. The flexibility has enabled enhanced collaboration and productivity, allowing teams to work seamlessly across different locations and time zones.

Post-global pandemic, as the corporate sector continues to adopt hybrid or remote working models, such an employment strategy becomes beneficial in addressing problems from a universal standpoint, where individuals are not constrained by rigid work hours. This form of cloud strategy enables people to experiment in a world of a boundary-less future of work, tapping into the best talent regardless of geography, fostering an agile, diverse workforce, and fast-tracked innovation.

For enterprise clients, a robust cloud strategy holds utmost importance in the current business landscape, especially as data-driven real-time decision-making increasingly takes centre stage and serves as the primary competitive lever.

Benefitting from data-centric strategies

An effective cloud strategy should encompass a roadmap for navigating the future, involving the migration of existing platforms and infrastructure to the cloud, as well as the development and maintenance of new cloud-native applications. Cloud platforms offer businesses robust analytics and data storage capabilities, empowering them to gather, analyse, and derive valuable insights from extensive and intricate datasets. These insights drive well-informed business decisions, process optimisation, and the discovery of untapped revenue streams.

A dedicated cloud services studio streamlines customers’ cloud transformation, operations, and migration initiatives. This studio should be structured to formulate a comprehensive cloud strategy, optimise cloud expenses, ensure cost-effectiveness, and enable businesses to allocate resources effectively. Additionally, it should furnish comprehensive cost optimisation recommendations for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) across single and multi-cloud environments, optimising resources based on accepted IaaS recommendations.

Delivering more with innovation

Cloud engineering plays a pivotal role in accelerating migration time, reducing deployment time, and enhancing scalability. Enterprise clients that have embraced cloud engineering solutions have reported significant benefits—over 50% acceleration in migration time, 90% workload movement to Azure and cloud-native platforms, 80% reduction in deployment time and scalability, and 30% increase in employee productivity.

Besides, the adoption of microservices architecture enables total independence for data management and a reduction in the cost of IT management operations by up to 25%.

According to McKinsey’s forecast for technological innovations, the cloud has expanded operational activity across industries by enabling the distribution of workloads across various locations. Instead of relying on a centralised source, the cloud fosters decentralisation, granting flexibility to data. This flexibility proves beneficial for both large and small-scale businesses, facilitating operations that transcend geographical boundaries.

The cloud revolutionises market entry barriers, shifting the focus from scale to skill. Smaller companies equipped with the right skills can now scale their businesses on cutting-edge infrastructure without the burden of upfront costs, providing a significant competitive advantage.

Gaining ground with higher productivity

In the digital age, the cloud, fuelled by data, serves as the cornerstone of strategic decision-making. Furthermore, the cloud enables greater development productivity through agile and DevSecOps methodologies, along with efficiency improvements through API-based or self-service-based workflows and automation. DevOps breaks down silos between development and operations, speeding up deployments and rendering infrastructure more flexible, resulting in faster releases and increased user satisfaction. AIOps leverages AI to forecast issues and automate resolutions, pre-empting problems and conserving time and resources.

For instance, automated patching, coupled with DevOps and AIOps, significantly shortens the systems’ development life cycle and provides a continuous delivery system with high software quality. Collectively, these components make cloud engineering swifter, more effective, and more dependable.

Enterprises embracing cloud engineering solutions have reported an 80% reduction in deployment time and scalability and a 30% increase in employee productivity.

For CXOs to successfully execute a comprehensive cloud strategy, establishing a specialised cloud and data organisation is crucial. This unit, whether internally formed or partnered with trusted consultants, focuses on addressing specific challenges related to cloud economies.

•             A good assessment and planning framework driven by consultants.

•             A solid to-be state architecture and design driven by cloud architects.

•             A well-formulated migration plan and execution roadmap driven by specialists.

•             A foundational cloud infrastructure setup team consisting of engineers and admins.

•             Recommendations and best practices adopted for security and compliance needs, driven by security consultants.

•             A solid bunch of cloud engineers with a focus on performance and continuous optimisation.

•             A robust automation and DevOps execution model using Infrastructure-as-code (IAC) tools, practised by efficient cloud engineering PODs.

Thus, such a cloud strategy empowers businesses with scalability, agility, cost efficiency, enhanced collaboration, business continuity, innovation, global reach, and seamless experience. By leveraging these advantages, enterprises can stay ahead of the competition with their ability to adapt quickly to market changes, drive innovation, optimise cost models, and deliver superior products or services.

By Ramakrishnan Jonnagadla

The author is Vice President of Engineering at Ascendion.

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