Here are some reasons behind the accelerated adoption of the cloud.
- Business resilience
Unlike back in the day when most conversations about the cloud revolved around modern infrastructure, faster marketing and cost optimization, the pandemic brought new conversations. People now know other aspects of the cloud, such as flexibility, increased computing power, disaster recovery, low cost of operations and resilience, which are core for business continuity. The cloud has also been proven to offer a safe return for the remote workforce and easy management in a remote workplace. This makes businesses resilient in difficult times.
- Need to change business operations
In the era of social distancing, business operations have been increasingly forced to adapt to the new dynamics. This has seen an increase in demand for services such as e-learning, telemedicine, virtual reality, and virtual retailing. Furthermore, the rise of the e-commerce industry has seen a shift to online shopping, while video-streaming services have also risen significantly. Thus, many retailers and entertainment industry players have been forced to rethink their business models. Traditional online retailers and brick-and-mortar stores have been forced to shift to online ordering and home deliveries to preserve their customer base.
- Online education
Even before the pandemic, there was a rising adoption of online education. However, with the lockdowns caused by the pandemic, many schools and universities moved their instructions and courses online as they sought to continue operations. The education industry has adopted the cloud significantly as they seek to conduct and process tuitions, exams and evaluations. The pandemic has led to the rise in the edtech sector, which has largely been contributed by the online services and the cloud.
- Investments in the public sector
While major investments in cloud technologies are carried out by the private sector, the pandemic has forced the public sector to do the same. Although government departments and other public institutions are often sluggish in adopting new technologies, they are now interested in cloud adoption as they seek to offer citizens better services in a remote and socially distanced era. This has massively increased the adoption of the cloud in the public sector.
Challenges of accelerated cloud adoption
- Getting skilled talent
With the scramble to adopt the cloud, there will be a shortage of talent, which will require upskilling. The journey to cloud adoption entails investing in infrastructure, planning and talent, without which there is a need to get the right people externally.
- Security concerns
There are various risks associated with cloud computing. One of the issues is security issues caused by rapid implementation without too much scrutiny. This may lead to loosening strict measures that are usually put in place to guard against security threats. Cloud service providers must allay the security fears of their customers before they embark on cloud adoption
- Relevant new operating models
Even after the pandemic has been eliminated completely, new operating models and business strategies will emerge establishing the cloud as a strategic tool for offering the necessary agility to developer faster solutions with low investment on IT infrastructure.