Why your enterprise project needs cloud
The cloud enables more than economical and unlimited data and computing resources, it provides a collaboration space and a marketplace for the co-creation, sharing and selling of data, experimental protocols and ideas. Strikingly, it’s been estimated that across the life sciences industry, cloud adoption and utilization is currently below 10%.
Cloud has already changed both business and everyday life – from consumers who perhaps unknowingly use it to access their favorite music, to companies that purposely harness its powerful resources. While much activity and buzz relating to cloud involves its technological capabilities, the benefits of cloud adoption actually extend into the business realm. When utilized effectively, cloud capabilities offer numerous opportunities to drive business innovation. Recent technology and social connectivity trends have created a perfect storm of opportunity for companies to embrace the power of cloud to optimize, innovate and disrupt business models. How do organizations use cloud today and how to employ its power in the future?
What makes embracing the cloud so important?
The cloud is the foundational element needed to manage the deluge of customer and business demands. Customers expect mobile connectivity, social interaction, hyper-personalization, digital communities and immediate gratification. Businesses need the ability to scale instantly, gain insights from Big Data analytics and user communities, and collaborate using the collective intelligence and expertise of their employees across departments. The cloud provides speed, agility, cost-effectiveness, and the ability to connect anywhere – all vital requirements to compete and deliver true innovation.
These benefits are particularly important to smaller businesses trying to break into industries where upfront investments or industry regulations act as high barriers to entry. Cloud-based platforms are about democratization of best of breed technologies for all, opening a new window of opportunity for smaller players eager to compete alongside large enterprises.
How to leverage and benefit from Cloud?
Get Software-Based Services To Market Faster
Cloud provides a platform for companies to quickly deploy software as a service that can be accessed and consumed by customers through a browser in a (near) platform independent way provided the device, such as a smartphone, is browser enabled. Connected, smart product can access Cloud-based data and application services through embedded software interfaces or applications running on the device to deliver an enhanced user experience with value-adding functionality and content. In short, you can get exciting, new services and content to market fast that can complement the value of your electronic hardware offerings.
Accelerate The Software Development Lifecycle
One of the great benefits of Cloud-based platform and infrastructure services is the ability to bring up environments on demand. The days of waiting for dedicated hardware and physical partition set up are gone. Thanks to virtualization technologies, software development teams can quickly set up the environments they need for development, testing, staging and production making it much easier to execute development activities concurrently. As a result, software-based service development cycle times can be compressed with improved agility to react to changes during the development process without increasing risk.
Optimize Your IT Assets & Capacity
Once you get your software-based service up and running, Cloud platforms enable you to optimize the capacity and utilization of your IT assets and to scale quickly to meet changes in demand. Automated provisioning and the emergence of self-managing Cloud platforms allow IT organizations to deliver software-based services and support customers and users in a more responsive, low-cost way than was possible before.
Simply put, the cloud platform has become a valuable competitive tool. Combined with cognitive computing, the Internet of Things (IoT) and innovative thinking, insightful organizations have transformed their cloud platform into a powerful analytical engine that enables consumer and business insights never before possible. This transformation has led to developments such as modern hybrid mobile apps and game-changing business applications that propelled forward-thinking organizations to greater success, and left others lagging behind.
Cloud technology has so quickly become prevalent in the business world that those who don’t quickly embrace it — and cognitive computing —risk the dire consequences of digital Darwinism; they will either evolve or become extinct.