Sailing With the Cloud: Strategies for Future Growth

By: Prabhakar Jayakumar, Country Director, DigitalOcean India

Imagine this scenario: you’re sitting at a cafe and your laptop is swiped from the table, unfortunately, it’s the year 2000. It would have been a very precarious situation, for along with the laptop, you also could have lost vital company data, including the presentation you slogged over for your organisation’s star client. Now imagine, if the same episode were to recur in 2018? Relax. Now, you have nothing to fear for cloud has your back—and your crucial storage backup, too, on office tools like Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365, among others.

Widely considered as one of the most powerful technology disruptors in the post-mainframe and client-server era, the cloud has completely taken over our work and personal life. Even the ubiquitous smartphone leverages cloud computing to provide on-demand access to data when synced to the Internet.

Although AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning are the hottest buzzwords nurturing a new generation of technology, cloud computing continues to be a major game changer that has shaped businesses to be agile and stay relevant in a highly competitive market.

According to market projections, the entire suite of IT enterprises will be cloud-based by 2020, and 60-70% of these enterprises will be investing heavily in this technology. The cloud services market in India is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 22% from 2015 to 2020. 

What makes cloud tick?

Besides the economic benefit of cloud computing, this technology also offers flexibility in supporting fluctuating workloads since organisations can rapidly scale up or ramp down based on requirements. The high level of scalability offered by cloud platforms allows companies to seamlessly adapt to clients’ unique business needs without continuously upgrading information infrastructure. It also enables businesses to achieve agility in a constantly evolving market scenario.

According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), the cloud delivery and consumption model will continue to record robust growth during the forecast period 2017-2021. As customer feedback and expectations are driving the future growth strategy for most businesses, it is essential that every company leverage cloud technology enable business innovation. Forrester Research, therefore, advises companies to strategize before they move infrastructure, data and apps to and from the cloud and between clouds.

The Strategy Ahead

Companies that want to move to the cloud should have early clarity on the kind of cloud infrastructure that would best suit their long-term goals.  They should be able to identify and evaluate the range of services they wish to avail from cloud infrastructure players that would best align with their overall vision.

As part of the strategy, a cloud disaster recovery system should be established to manage resources efficiently.  

Furthermore, while working out their cloud strategy, an organisation’s executive leadership should be decisive about moving to a cloud-centric enterprise. In recent years, FedEx Corporation’s phenomenal transition to cloud computing, that led to improved processing performance and decreased development effort, is the success story of how a company kept pace with innovation to emerge as the undisputed industry leader in logistics and data analytics. The company’s leadership realised that if FedEx had to remain agile, it had to embrace cloud technology.

Closer home, Indian businesses have also reaped the benefits of cloud technology. Oyo Rooms, the game changer in the hospitality industry, achieved agility and flexibility early on in its start-up cycle due to effectively integrating all the competencies of the cloud.  There are other examples, too, like Coverfox, the insurance portal, which is a testimony to the fact that India is fuelling the growth story in cloud technology.

One question that commonly gets asked is “Will cloud still be relevant in a future era where AI could shape the future of mankind?”. If anything, the demand for cloud is predicted to increase as AI would extensively leverage the power of the cloud.

So, the real question is: Have you migrated to the cloud yet?