According to Cisco’s Global Cloud Index, enterprise workloads and compute instances will account for 73 percent of total data center workloads by 2021. The report further suggests that by 2021,
1. 75 percent of the entire cloud workloads will be SaaS
2. 16 percent of the entire cloud workloads will be IaaS
3. 9 percent of the entire cloud workloads will be PaaS
Cloud providers like Microsoft Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud, and Google Cloud Platform are already offering open stack-based cloud platforms, encouraging businesses to move to the cloud.
The message is explicit − cloud adoption is transforming the analytics landscape.
Benefits of cloud adoption
While the reasons may vary from business to business, the benefits are as follows:
Flexibility:
Unlike traditional systems, hosting data on the cloud provides various deployment options. Landing, transformation, storage, and query, along with other functional components, can be deployed on private, public cloud platforms, or can be integrated within a hybrid cloud architecture. Additionally, with secure load-and-go provisioning, enterprises have the option to choose either a fully managed subscription or pay-as-per-usage depending on their business need.
Cost efficiency:
Artificial intelligence allows rapid processing of massive amounts of data, which was not possible a few years ago. This may lead to a marketing revolution as AI can be creatively used in areas like dynamic pricing, automated A/B testing, intelligent chat-bots, or predictive analysis. As the implementation costs get lower, enterprises can benefit from the advantages offered by AI and ML solutions even in the cloud.
Agility:
Speed can either be access speed or processing speed. Depending on the business requirement, the cloud offers different ways to get the speed you need. Cloud services can process mission-critical workloads in real-time, both for data in motion and data at rest, and accelerate in-database parallel processing of analytic algorithm libraries.
Scalability:
As businesses grow, data volumes and varieties also increase. Enterprises looking for cloud infrastructure can be both scaled up and scaled out. While some cloud infrastructure like Redshift can be scaled horizontally, adding more nodes to meet the demand, some like Amazon’s S3 allow exponential scaling for read/write operations to achieve extremely high request rates. Some cloud infrastructure like Microsoft Azure allows decoupling of computing and storage, which provides more flexible scaling options.
Advantages of cloud adoption
Cloud adoption has many benefits for enterprises, some of which are listed below:
Popularity of BYOD
Cloud hosting has made it possible for enterprises to outsource operations. With employees and partners using their own devices to access corporate data, businesses have become global and resource independent.
Microsoft reports that 67% of US employees benefited from a BYOD policy that allows them flexibility at work.
With BYOD, tracking and monitoring solutions have also gained popularity. SaaS has enabled cloud-hosting of such solutions with dedicated roles and permissions. Unified cloud solutions have helped companies standardize diverse business processes while ensuring compliance.
Seamless customer experience
The customizable customer-centric approach of interactive cloud solutions has made it popular with end-users. Minimal intervention from the provider, minimal maintenance, and automated system updates on a single-click approval that puts a user in control are some other factors that account for seamless customer experience.
Transparent data protection policy
Cloud adoption can relieve IT departments of the burden of security by defining well-laid rules and privileges for all the users. It helps to avoid confusions around who is supposed to do what, providing solutions that have role-based access across the organization.
Custom Integrations
Cloud solutions are built to integrate with many third-party solutions and can work with legacy systems. While the solutions are targeted, they are not industry-specific and have open API access for developers to customize as per the business need.
Overall impact of the shift
There is no doubt that moving your analytics to the cloud can offer major benefits to your enterprise. Beyond the obvious benefits of cost saving, decision-makers can decide what they need in real-time, access the data from any device, and from any location. This would enable them to make stronger, data-driven decisions that benefit your overall business strategy.
