Accelerating Digital Transformation Through the Cloud

Whether you agree or not, conventional businesses have become redundant by the advent of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, IoT and ML. Today, rapidly changing customer needs are forcing enterprises to evolve, adopt and devise strategies where they can surgically strike offers to a segment of few rather than blast a shotgun of offerings to an uninterested many. Nevertheless, this kind of marketing precision doesn’t come easy unless it’s backed by a robust computing power.

Cloud has emerged as a primary disruptive force for enterprises to augment insights-based innovation to drive digital transformation and maintain that competitive edge. Cloud has proven to be a core enabler for business agility, automation & cost optimization.

According to research findings by Markets and Markets, the global cloud computing market size is expected to grow from USD 445.3 billion in 2021 to USD 947.3 billion by 2026, at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.3% during the forecast period.

Why is the cloud essential for digital transformation?

Use of remote servers over a network is known as cloud computing. These servers can provide functionalities like storage, processing, security, analytics etc. For digital disruption to take place, an enterprise needs to modernize its conventional business processes by leveraging technologies like AI, IoT, Chatbots, AR, ML etc. For seamless execution, these technologies need heavy computing power, storage, and IT infrastructure. Cloud computing provides these services based on an enterprise’s individual requirements.

The cloud fuels innovation by:

• Gives a compatible set of APIs for developers.
• Firms can reuse enterprise data.
• Offers easy and scalable low-code platforms.
• Provides a powerful tech backbone for highly sophisticated analytics platforms.
• Provides Big Data repositories for the collection of massive data.
• Offers a tight privacy and security framework.

According to Gartner, by 2024, more than 45% of IT spending on system infrastructure, application software, infrastructure software and business process outsourcing will shift from traditional solutions to the cloud. Even more appealing, another finding by Gartner shows that by 2025 more than 55% of large organizations will implement a cloud-only strategy.

Digital transformation calls for creating newer business models to stay relevant and thrive in a dynamic ecosystem. Enterprises must continuously innovate to stay ahead of the curve, and the cloud is the catalyst that drives innovation. When businesses start to adapt their processes to a digital environment, they require scalability, cost and work efficiency, elasticity, and agility.

Here is how the Cloud Augments Digital Transformation

Agility

To retain the market share and competitive edge, enterprises have to constantly reinvent their business models. Cloud offers the essential infrastructure, platforms and computing abilities that supports firms stay agile and ready to embrace change.

Reduced Operational Cost

Cloud offers a scalable service model where enterprises can pay only for the resources used. It helps scale the resources specifically on the requirements basis and saves the cost of purchasing and managing IT infrastructure. Above all, cloud servers decrease the need of IT support staff and continual server environment refreshes.

Security

Migrating a database to the cloud offers various advantages of enhanced protection from threats such as data breaches, disasters, and system shutdown. You can create multiple backups.

Efficiency

Maximum efficiency can be derived with minimal costs by the use of cloud computing. It brings agility and flexibility by providing requisite platforms, infrastructure, without investing in different IT infrastructure. This enables enterprises to quickly respond to customer needs, removing the issue of IT systems overload or over-provisioning.

Scalability

Scalability is another advantage cloud computing offer, where enterprises can use the resources and bandwidth as per the need at a specific point of time. And enterprises can only pay for this capacity. Flexibility in reducing or increasing resources as per the need basis. Above all, firms have a constant overview of their usage status.

Enhanced Collaboration

Cloud computing ensures efficient collaboration and improved productivity by enabling businesses to access, retrieve and process information whenever wherever. Moreover, with cloud, video communication is much easier, as it lets businesses to monitor, manage and schedule meetings directly onto the system.

Faster Prototyping

Ideating, innovating, testing, and deploying is the cycle enterprises follow to drive digital transformation. The cloud enables the efficient execution of this entire process without the need for complicated resources and infrastructure. Therefore, an enterprise can test and deploy different applications on different platforms during experimentation.

Most enterprises across the verticals have resorted to an iterative approach for cloud transitioning where data and analytics is at the forefront for cloud migration.

• Banks and Financial Services: Managing customer engagement across the lifecycle plus business-specific use cases around credit supply, customer behavioral analysis, portfolio management, debt recovery and collections.
• Insurance Sector: Using AI-driven business processes right from customer onboarding, claims & policy management, AI led underwriting, and pricing & reserving.
• Manufacturing Sector: Use of AI / ML competences not only in supply chain optimization and demand planning but also in the realm of new product forecasting by leveraging techniques like recommendation engines and market mix models.
• Energy & Utility: Enterprises are moving meter readings, fault detection and predictive maintenance use cases to the cloud.
• Public Sector: Government agencies already deployed AI and analytics on cloud for managing customer grievances & sentiment analysis, and, also for enhancing transparency in government functioning by using extensive dashboards and reporting capabilities.

It is evident from the range of use cases; enterprises are leveraging the constant advances in the fields of data science combined with the notch of agility and flexibility of moving applications to cloud to create an API-based consumption ecosystem.

This agility also brings in a set of challenges regarding the ethical and societal implications of data usage and how sacrosanct is the privacy of this data in the cloud.

Challenges in Implementing Cloud for Digital Transformation

Data Security and Service Quality

Additional security measures are need when the information is migrated to the cloud. The user’s security and privacy controls are hold by the cloud service provider, where there is a possibility of exposing critical information to attack. Another challenge is the poor quality of cloud services. A promising solution is to retain control of data and enable real-time analysis via dashboards. Other important factors to be considered are performance, scalability, and availability of cloud services.

Performance and Costs

Applications which are rich in & driven by data often result in higher costs. There would be a spike in the bandwidth requirements when exhaustive and intricate data is sent over the network. To keep the costs down, enterprises should analyze and devise a metered and dynamic pricing model. Cloud service providers must also be flexible in fixing costs for customized services as well.

Migrating and integrating Existing Systems

The task of migrating legacy systems to digital platforms is a herculean task. With the organizational support and sizeable budget allocation, this can be accomplished. But the actual challenge lies in integrating the existing infrastructure with the cloud to ensure maximum efficiency and productivity.

Governance

Data and information are used in accordance with agreed upon policies and procedures is what governance ensures. Enterprises should also make sure that; IT governance must align with overarching goals and objectives of the business. Cloud-based systems offer only limited control over how infrastructure is provided and operated. Hence the need for stringent governance measures.

Cloud is Essential for Advancing Digital Transformation

In this digital economy, data & analytics will increasingly harness the cloud to drive digitalization across enterprises. Cloud becomes the catalyst for this transformation and have a key role to play. In an era where enterprise success is measured by customer experience, a cloud-enabled and cloud-delivered business model helps enterprises discover innovative channels to offer a superior customer experience.

Though cloud technology offers a plethora of benefits, it’s not an easy task. Engaging a dedicated cloud service provider for your cloud migration project will ease your cloud transition journey.

Conclusion

The shift to digital-first has resulted in organizations reimagining their business models and customer strategies. A robust digital transformation strategy requires a complete makeover of the traditional QA processes and infrastructure.

At Cigniti, we help you provide fast, secure, and smooth cloud migration assurance (CMA) services for mainstream applications with certified cloud professionals. A deep understanding of large-scale migration projects allows Cigniti to propose an optimal test strategy based on the migration methodologies being followed.

Cigniti’s Cloud Assurance Platform (CLAP) has been built on top of BlueSwan™ to provide comprehensive testing services across the migration lifecycle. The migration assurance platform is a differentiator that will help you gain access to value-added services across the migration lifecycle by accelerating automation.

Cigniti has strategic partnerships with multiple leading digital services and consulting firms, which makes us well-positioned to deliver comprehensive and high-quality services across the cloud ecosystem.

Schedule a discussion with our Digital Transformation experts and Cloud Migration Assurance experts to learn more about accelerating digital transformation through the cloud.