Seven Top Business Benefits of Cloud Migration

When a company wants to migrate to cloud, it moves away from on-site infrastructure and in-house servers, taking some or all of its data center capabilities to the cloud. The idea is step away from legacy infrastructure and move to cloud computing, leading to faster deployment times, innovation and agile businesses. 

Cloud migration promises agility, cost benefits and is the way of the future. All major industries are migrating software, infrastructure, products, services, and applications to the cloud. The growth in cloud adoption is an important sign for companies and presents them with tremendous market potential as well as the impetus to innovate and reinvent their products and services. In fact, 36% of application software companies who used on-site infrastructure to host their software have now moved to the cloud. This explains why so many companies are making at least a partial migration to cloud technology. 

The pandemic has accelerated the shift to cloud technology. According to this report, 83% of enterprises already use a cloud service and the market is expected to reach $623.3 billion worldwide by 2023. Gartner’s research indicates “that more than a third of organizations see cloud investments as a top-three investing priority, which is impacting market offerings.” Gartner forecasts a 28% increase in revenue for the year 2022 due to cloud migration. Their recent, post-COVID data states that 70% of companies that currently use cloud services plan to increase spending on cloud due to the unprecedented disruption caused by COVID-19.

It is interesting that regardless of the size of the company, cloud computing offers a competitive advantage and has become crucial for businesses that want to thrive and stay relevant.

The benefits of cloud migration are many. It enables an enterprise to scale and to adopt powerful computing and storage capabilities. It also reduces expenses and helps the company meet the many demands of the current world. In short, cloud services are the future. Here are seven benefits of cloud migration. 

1. Faster Deployment and Time to Market 

In a rapidly changing marketplace where delivery cycle time matters, moving to cloud ensures faster deployment of applications and services. When companies provision servers instead of buying them and setting them up, deployment of applications and solutions becomes quicker and simpler.

On the cloud, companies can also test and deploy new business applications with tremendous ease and speed, ensuring that production can carry on uninterrupted.

Faster deployment time can lead to higher ROI. Many companies now use container technology, the latest development in cloud computing. They use containers to support every stage of the application, with every stage running in an independent environment. When a company migrates its applications to containers, there are many benefits. Container technology helps development teams work quickly to deploy software and to optimize their resources. When operating in the cloud, solutions and services are spread across many servers. If one server is not available, data can be accessed from the other servers.

Companies need to meet growing demands by putting time and effort into scaling their IT infrastructure but doing this on their own can be time-consuming. With high availability of cloud resources, business applications and services can run smoothly. Cloud computing leads to the increase of processing power and this executes millions of instructions per second, leading to market uptime.

With cloud computing, a company can deploy applications and services in hours instead of weeks. This is a definite competitive advantage. Eliminating the hassles of maintaining and managing on-site IT infrastructure, companies can focus more on innovation and in delivering immediate business results.

2. Cost Saving and Optimization

A compelling reason to move to cloud services is the significant money that a company saves. For instance, auto-scaling is a great way to optimize cloud services and a few cloud service providers do offer this option. This means that companies only pay for what they use. They can scale up and down when needed, without incurring expenses that they would when keeping machines up and running even outside of peak load times. Companies provision services as and when needed, and turn them off when they are not required.

Consider these expenses. A company’s on-site data centers require a huge initial capital investment for the hardware, which increases year on year if you are digitizing your solutions while you face the risk of the hardware becoming obsolete. With cloud services, the company primarily incurs monthly operating costs. A company can also save on the costs incurred due to personnel requirement of dedicated IT specialists. 

An in-house setup requires continuous maintenance, on-site staff and purchase of new systems for resource enablement. These costs do not exist with cloud services.

In 2015, the US economy spent over $30 billion due to idle servers and hardware inefficiencies, not to mention wasted energy. A report by Tech Republic stated that 95% of respondents attributed reduction of setup and maintenance costs to cloud services. The survey also added that 50% of the respondents saw IT costs dropping to 50% due to their migration to cloud.

According to McKinsey’s recent report, cloud promises more than 20% rise in the overall financial performance across various industries.

3. Increased Data Security

Another significant reason for companies to migrate to cloud is the security consideration. When done right, cloud services can offer more security as compared to traditional network systems.

One would assume that an open environment such as a cloud facility will be more prone to security threats but surprisingly, cloud service providers take stringent measures to ensure security, safeguarding data from attacks, including unnecessary traffic from outside the approved locations. Companies should choose cloud service providers that provide secure cloud connections and networks.

More experienced cloud providers have automatic security updates and work with the companies to make sure that they have security protocols from their end too. There is more control over data access and more protection against hacks. 

With cloud-to-cloud backups, companies can be notified when there are problems or potential issues with apps or machines, saving them significant amount of time because they need not keep track of their services on their own. Cloud services also provide automatic backup and logging services, especially if there is a shutdown or an outage. Cloud monitoring operates in real-time and gives the company visibility across storage environments, apps and networks. 

Companies can opt for cloud service providers that have strong data encryption services. Many good cloud service providers also ensure robust password and access management policies. Companies can check if these cloud service providers comply with important security standards, from design to deployment.

Cloud monitoring tools can also keep track of large data volumes and can quickly find the underlying cause of production problems or outages. 

 
4. Agility and Flexibility 

Migrating to the cloud reduces infrastructure complexity and enables agility and flexibility in many ways. Now more than ever, businesses need agility and the ability to operate from anywhere. Cloud services enable this flexibility in spades.

When working on the cloud, your team need not be physically present to fix issues on-site. Collaboration for staff is easier because the provisioning processes are consistent and the deployment is efficient. With everyone operating on the same page, there is no need for departments outside the central IT department to fix the problems of the central information systems. With cloud services, companies can test and rapidly develop applications.

Cloud services enable plug and play solutions and capacity on demand. Companies can use these benefits to guarantee business continuity during uncertain times and to adopt modern, cutting-edge business practices. The very philosophy that drives cloud based systems and applications is agility. Agile applications are at the core of cloud computing and extends not just to apps but also to the company’s philosophy as a whole.

Based on its necessities, a company can scale up processes and expand even to international markets using globally distributed data centers and hybrid cloud computing solutions.

If it takes weeks to provision servers, it is next to impossible to make leaps in business efficiency. Cloud services support large capacity for short periods instead of companies having to provision servers permanently. While cloud services drive agility and flexibility, companies and developers with an agile mindset find that cloud computing in turn enhances their work and needs. 

5. Scalability and Elasticity

Unlike physical infrastructure, cloud-based virtual machines are flexible, which makes it easy for companies to scale up or scale down. A scalable cloud architecture is a huge boon to companies that are looking at expanding and entering different markets. A company can shift its workload to bigger virtual machines, as and when needed. Virtual machines can be hosted on many servers at once, or can be moved to different servers altogether. Cloud service providers also monitor apps and machines to check for downtime or outages, making sure that services are restored immediately.

Cloud service providers have enormous hardware and software resources at their disposal. This is a huge advantage for companies that need this scale rapidly with little disruption to normal business processes. As the company and its requirements grow, the cloud infrastructure grows as per requirements too. Global servers ensure that no matter where the company’s employees or customers are located, the process and user experience flow seamlessly.

Elastic scalability is a term that is often associated with cloud migration and cloud service providers. Elastic scalability refers to a company scaling up or down as per changing demands. Any increase in workload and user activity triggers internal auto scaling processes, enabling cloud service providers to help companies manage additional workload. 

Cloud services make it easy for companies of all sizes to scale up and down as per their business size, needs and growth. This benefit is crucial for a small or medium sized company that suddenly experiences growth or is expected to grow substantially in the near future. With cloud migration’s on-demand business model, companies can deploy apps and take them to the market quickly. For companies that are poised for exponential growth, this is a huge asset.   

6. Innovation and Digital Transformation

While cost savings and scalability are on every company’s radar, companies need to innovate and achieve digital transformation in order to stay relevant. COVID-19 has shown us that companies that do not adapt will perish.

According to the latest McKinsey report on cloud migration, 75% of cloud’s predicted value comes from boosting innovation. If a company wants to build a growth model based on digital transformation and innovation, cloud is the way to go. When IT professionals in a company spend less time on operations and more time on releasing applications and deploying solutions, there is room for innovation and important business breakthroughs.  

With digital transformation being foremost on every business’s mind, companies are exploring exciting technologies like AI, machine learning and analytics. It is next to impossible to digitize a company’s workspace and build such capabilities from scratch, which is where cloud technology comes in. Many cloud service providers offer innovative technologies as part of their platforms and companies can use them to enable digital transformation. They can prototype, build, test and deploy quickly and more efficiently. Cloud services offer many prototyping tools for this purpose. The flexibility of a cloud service can even give them the chance to pivot without disrupting their workflows.

In short, cloud technology gives companies the chance innovate better, stay ahead of the curve and reduce technology risks significantly. 

With cloud technology, companies have many resources, tools and applications. They need not rely on rigid legacy systems and redundant technology environments.

 7. Product Improvement, Operational Efficiency and Mobility

Cloud service providers have a network of data centers that offer high performance, speed, and security. A company can integrate these services using its own enterprise systems and modernize its processes. A standalone enterprise data center cannot compete against this level of efficiency. With cloud-based services, companies can connect their applications to digitize, modernize and boost productivity. 

Companies are able to utilize resources and optimize efficiency by using automated programs, mobile apps and APIs. Cloud services also enable mobility for a company. With access becoming the buzzword among enterprises, cloud technology will help companies give customers what they want whenever they want and from any place. This improves productivity and elevates the customer experience.

In Summary

With business continuity a major concern during the pandemic, cloud is vital to businesses that want to handle uncertainty and reinvent themselves. Cloud services also boost employee productivity. Employees spend less time troubleshooting the company’s IT platforms and more time on tasks that are critical.  With cloud services offering APIs for the purposes of provisioning, the company’s IT professionals do not have to code everything from scratch. This speeds up the processes considerably. 

Cloud services offer metrics measuring and built-in status monitoring. These features can enable companies to benefit from a single pane of view across environments and applications. An enterprise can view and work on services, deployment, implementation and monitoring using a common interface.

The year 2021 has opened up many possibilities and opportunities in leveraging and optimizing modern technologies. A new generation of technology experts and professionals are depending on and servicing cloud migration and platforms.  Companies that migrate to cloud can utilize exciting new technologies like AI and machine learning. Today, competition is tough and the technology landscape is changing rapidly. With more and more companies migrating to and prioritizing cloud computing, many more cloud services are expected to come up and offer opportunities for companies to streamline processes, innovate and transform themselves into digital-first businesses.