Key Cloud Factors to Consider while Building Your Business Strategy

By: Vikas Arora, Country Manager, Cloud Business - IBM India & South Asia

Today, leaders across an enterprise to startups need to plan for workloads which are future ready to deal with shifting IT landscapes. Businesses have long since woken up to the need for cloud computing. Everyone today thinks of a Cloud first approach keeping in mind how they can:

1. Facilitate rapid growth through scalability with Cloud
2. Add ability to innovate and experiment
3. Protect against costly data breaches
4. Mine critical, actionable insights from the data and be cognitive ready

However, the trends show that despite the proliferation of cloud, most of the organizations are still failing to utilize the full potential of cloud computing. Most importantly, how cloud technologies can be used to drive economic advantage. This failure is largely driven owing to the misconception that cloud only offers little more than a way to cut technology costs, rather than looking at it as a platform for building strategic business advantages. Also, companies must consider the emerging forms of cloud-based services such as blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT). So, how does a leader make the right cloud choice which is built to help scale?

The best cloud solutions must comprise core characteristics like:

Is your Cloud enterprise grade?

Look first for an industrial strength public cloud, which delivers a hybrid blend of choice and consistency. This kind of option includes advanced security compared with private cloud options and offers scale for future growth. Having a strong public cloud but designed for the industry with choice and consistency, is crucial. It must be more secure than on-prem and have a secure pipeline for the future. A strong public cloud isn’t just about scale, it’s about data sovereignty.

The enterprise grade cloud should also able to help in accelerating innovation. The cloud platform should offer a range of the very latest software technologies. Again, at the click of a button. This gives businesses the ability to innovate and experiment. They can run trials for a new piece of technology, dabble in artificial intelligence and investigate the use of a chatbot to change the way they do customer service. This empowers organizations to be agile, adapt and utilize innovative technologies, all geared towards driving a strategic edge over competitors.

Is it built to give customers get value from their data?

Data is the world’s next natural resource. The person who mines the data today makes more money than the person who generates it. To acquire the best business insight, leaders must choose cloud options that prioritize data diversity (the ability to combine public, private and licensed data), data control with locality (understanding location, who is using the data and for what) and data isolation (the practice of preventing the data from being mined for commercial reasons).

Let’s look at a scenario; company A chose this route which is a global telecommunications provider and is supporting business customers’ IoT with data insights. Now, company B which is an oil and gas sector could use company A’s IoT network to analyze data from hundreds of wells and detect unusual events if any. This data feeds the models necessary with appropriate machine learning libraries and open source technology to help predict potential failures or machine malfunctions. The company can detect anomalies in less time and with greater accuracy.

Is it build for the future?

Today’s enterprise cloud must possess a full range of cognitive abilities, from machine learning to AI. In its most advanced form, this translates to human-like capabilities such as seeing, hearing and reading. Like many industries, retail is being disrupted as clients are choosing mobile devices over brick-and-mortar offices or looking at more personalized experience while at the store or using the website. For example, Titan Company tapped Cloud and Cognitive to personalize all customer interactions both online and in the store, introducing shoppers to new relevant products that not only evoke the design and flare that is indicative of their products, but reflect their unique, personal styles. Anything now that Titan does is not just born in the cloud, it is the cloud with their path to cognitive.

Is it built keeping in mind the security first approach?

Lastly, cloud helps react to an emerging trend, scale to maximize efficiency or implement advanced cyber security initiatives to defend against ever increasing threats. It also helps to comply with key regulatory requirements, establish appropriate risk management strategies, no matter what the cloud security service model, protect confidentially, integrity and availability of the resources and data workloads and extend controls beyond on-premises environments with governance and assurance.

Every company’s data workload will continue to grow at a rapid pace. That only elevates the importance of its cloud solution choices. The most successful leaders will consciously consider these characteristics to move their companies faster and further into the future. Businesses who invest in this opportunity – and overcome the obstacles – will have a significant advantage over their competition.