Can businesses exist if they’re not in the cloud?

, Aug 3, 2021

By Paul Stapley, Hybrid Cloud Practice Director at Logicalis UK

Business leaders everywhere are realising ‘I won’t exist if I am not in the cloud’.

Survival and business continuity relies on two critical features:

Firstly, competitiveness. How productive is your workforce? Are you utilising data to better serve customers and win new business? Are your operations as cost optimised as they can be?

The second component is resilience. Without resilience any business will fail. Does your business have the agility to respond to market pressures? Are you protected against ransomware and other growing threats?

Is your business confident in these areas? If not, that’s a challenging place to be, and you run the risk of falling behind.

Look to data for the answer

Data is the beating heart of any organisation. Long-term success is heavily influenced by a company’s approach to its data and unlocking the value that exists within.

Fully unlocking the value of data can, however, be a laborious and specialised task. Learning data governance while re-designing processes to be cloud-native are important but challenging steps to take alone.

Putting data, activated by the cloud, at the heart of your operation opens up insight and informs decision making as well as growing your bottom line. These steps are crucial to not just getting ahead but staying there.

Business agility is vital

Business agility is the ability of a business to realise and meet customer demand by rapidly adapting goods and services. The pandemic forced businesses to adopt digital investments that would normally take decades in a matter of days to sustain operations and remain competitive.

The cloud has come into its own in this time, offering cheaper storage options than traditional solutions along with infinite scalability and high-level security. Being able to shift and move high and low intensity processes onto different solutions optimises costs and offers flexibility and agility, all while enjoying the highest security standards possible.

With breaches and ransomware attacks increasing by 450% in just the last year, if security isn’t the top priority of your IT department, then your business risks trouble. Companies already on the cloud are re-evaluating their security choices, ensuring they are as protected as possible from the crippling effects of a breach.  

Work with an expert

‘Lifting and shifting’ applications onto the cloud once and forgetting about the exercise is not the solution some leaders think it is. To truly unlock the value of data, with the cloud, companies need to work with experts who can transform their IT architecture from the ground up. By doing this and becoming a truly cloud-native company, your business can unlock the cutting-edge technology being developed by cloud providers, drastically improving revenues and security in the process.

The pace of these developments from cloud providers such as Microsoft are incredible but, potentially, overwhelming. For the un-initiated it can be a struggle to keep up with the rate of improvement providers are constantly offering, from AI automation to the latest security features.

Logicalis’ experience with a range of cloud providers, both public and private, means we speak to the providers directly. We know what’s coming down the pipeline and we can adapt when technologies change and improve. We work with our customers to provide the best solution, or combination of solutions, for them and always ensure security is our number one priority.

As the pandemic continues to (hopefully) abate, businesses are realising that the cloud isn’t a choice anymore, it’s a requirement for survival. No matter the size of your business leveraging the latest technology is crucial to ensure continuity going ahead. The only question remains, does your business exist if it’s not in the cloud?

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