The current trendy tech concept is cloud computing. But is this hot topic just hype? Or could it transform our organizations?
There is an ever-present pressure on IT teams to do more with less. Data volumes are increasing, budgets are decreasing, and teams are spread past thin. Something’s got to give; but how does a brokerage decide if a cloud environment can help?
Anne Buff, an SAS Best Practices thought leader, offers these seven key business drivers that will help determine when moving to a cloud environment is no longer just trendy, but a necessary reality:
1. Rigorous fiscal planning
Reporting and budgeting have come under extensive review in organizations as a result of current economic conditions. Every department is expected to justify expenditures in short- and long-term plans. The justification and planning for hardware, software and related services can often be a bit of a guessing game, but migrating to cloud services can eliminate the guesswork. Predictable costs that can be directly associated with business activities result in more rigorous year-to-year fiscal planning.
2. Rising costs of hardware and software
While the actual cost of computing processing cycles continues to decline, the total costs of hardware and software needed to run a business are rising. What often catches companies off guard is the increasing rate of upgrades needed, particularly to handle the big data volumes necessary for today’s business analysis.
As project demands grow, so do the technical requirements. Business seasonality and economic ebbs and flows compound the difficulty, since computer centers built for peak loads have excess capacity most of the year. Keeping up with these changes can be difficult, time consuming and expensive. Organizations that aren’t able to upgrade their technology in parallel with their business needs significantly impede their own growth. Cloud services offer organizations the ability to scale their hardware and software technologies with the needs of the business. (continued.)
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3. Infrastructure maintenance
Availability and reliability are key requirements of almost any, if not all, technical infrastructures today. Maintaining high availability and expected reliability are time-consuming and resource-intensive tasks that exponentially grow as new hardware and software are added. Infrastructure services in the cloud provide organizations with higher availability and reliability than they can provide with their own resources, and often at a fraction of the cost.
4. Increased IT demand and decreased resources
IT support needs are ubiquitous and differ across the organization. Prioritizing these needs becomes a difficult challenge and often spreads IT resources thin. Hiring trained and proficient employees, particularly specialists, is even more challenging as the pool of available workers decreases. Using cloud services provided by vendors gives organizations constant access to skilled experts without the requirement of having to train or hire as new technologies are released.
5. Time to value
Adopting new technologies can often be a long and arduous process. The length of time between development and production can be an obstacle for organizations because, after all, the system is only as valuable as the value it delivers the organization. Cloud services significantly reduce, if not completely eliminate, time-to-value concerns as implementation time can be as fast as immediate.
6. Increased business focus
As organizations look to align their technical strategies with their business initiatives, the focus switches from the technical capabilities of the software and hardware to the business benefits and results. The ease of implementing cloud services lets everyone benefit immediately.
7. Risk, compliance and security
Making resources more available to meet mobility needs certainly introduces new risks to organizations and increases compliance and security requirements significantly. Staying abreast of the regulations to which the organization must comply can be difficult, if not impossible. While risk and compliance can be a driving force for migrating to a cloud environment, it should also be one of the most heavily considered factors when selecting cloud service providers. A vendor that thoroughly understands the regulations applicable to your business and addresses your governance and security needs will prove to be invaluable.
Anne Buff is a SAS Best Practices thought leader specializing in cloud, data integration, master data management and team building.
