The benefits of employing cloud workloads are well-documented. By reducing the need for maintaining on-premises infrastructure, the cloud has proven to be cost-effective for businesses, while also offering higher availability for users and faster software patches and updates. Organizations that know how to fully leverage cloud benefits can position themselves at a competitive advantage over industry peers. Simply put, the cloud offers considerable flexibility and cost savings that helps businesses elevate their performance.
And yet, there is room for growth when it comes to cloud utilization. While the cloud services market is a $200 billion industry, global IT spending was projected before the coronavirus pandemic to reach nearly $4 trillion in 2020, which indicates much of that spending is for on-premises technology. We’re still learning how to fully leverage cloud services and the full scope of benefits the cloud can provide.
As more organizations move away from on-premises technologies and adopt cloud services, it becomes clear that now is an opportune time for dynamic companies to fully embrace the cloud. BitTitan began moving all workloads to the cloud five years ago and has completed 80% of the journey. Now the pathway to an all-cloud environment is much clearer, and the goal is to complete the move by the end of 2021.
While many unknowns remain, there are countless benefits to being an early adopter of such innovative technology. Here are a few reasons why companies should begin moving all of their workloads to the cloud.
1. A Good Time to Clean House
First, don’t plan to simply move everything to the cloud; now is the time to clean house. Evaluate the environment and assess what’s needed. This will help optimize cloud usage and reduce the cost of cloud services.
Moving to the cloud from an on-premises environment presents an opportunity to restructure outdated and inefficient operations and workloads that won’t work in the cloud. Build an initiatives roadmap to detail every step of the process and prioritize which data and applications will be moved accordingly.
Also, prioritize data security throughout the process and implement security policies at every step. Consider tasking one member of the team with making sure security policies are followed and implemented appropriately. Leverage the assistance of partners like Microsoft for guidance on best practices.
2. Stronger Security and Data Governance
There are several ways the cloud can enhance security and data governance, the most notable of which is by employing the use of single sign-on, which enables a user to login with a single ID and password to securely access multiple applications across the organization. It allows IT to add or remove employees or set role-based permissions from a single location to easily control access to sensitive data.
The cloud also enables streamlined security audits for applications like CRM and Exchange email to quickly identify issues or vulnerabilities. This helps companies pinpoint their biggest security risks and make any necessary changes to ensure protection is maintained.
3. Improved Cost Management
The centralized nature of cloud environments not only applies to monitoring security, but also cost. Cost management centers are located within the same cloud portal, allowing organizations better visibility into how costs are managed. Software auditing can be conducted on past software purchases to determine if they’re still being utilized. Similarly, the cloud allows license auditing to help organizations make sure their employees are licensed correctly and haven’t overpurchased.
Organizations can run routine resource assessment tests as well, helping to ensure cloud resources are either being used effectively or being discontinued to avoid unnecessary costs. For example, if a company plans to power off virtual machines, an assessment can help ensure the VM disks have been deleted and everything has been shut down.
4. Enhanced Productivity and Employee Experience
There are countless benefits for employees and end users. For one, employees can access their data from anywhere at any time, allowing those who work remotely the ability to work collaboratively with other co-workers in other locations. Having all information and data in one accessible place allows employees to look at insights and analytics and track key performance indicators.
Organizations can automate much of the process of onboarding new employees in the cloud as well. This helps improve the new hire experience by making it more seamless. It also allows the IT department more time to focus on critical employee needs, such as the ability to be proactive instead of reactive with technical issues, creating step-by-step training for new cloud apps and features, and focusing on security awareness.
The cloud also enables a great deal of employee self-service for tasks such as resetting passwords or adding people to their own distribution groups or teams. There’s no downtime waiting for the IT team to do these things, which helps increase productivity.
5. Streamlined Workplace Systems
From HR to IT to finance, many of the applications used throughout an organization now have built-in integrations with programs like Office 365. Organizations no longer need a senior-level developer to code the integrations using APIs. In the cloud, these integrations require only a few clicks, and result in streamlined workflows and improved operations monitoring.
While a full move to the cloud may not be entirely possible today, we are rapidly drawing closer to the day when it will become a reality. The cloud provides companies new ways of improving their business operations, and there are countless new benefits to be realized from fully leveraging its services. Ultimately, the cloud offers an opportunity for businesses to increase efficiency by providing more flexibility and agility, not only for the company and its costs, but for employees as well. Why wait on going all-in on the cloud? The time to act is now.
Nik Thumma is an IT manager, systems engineer at BitTitan, where he manages help desk and IT expenses, coordinates company-wide integration of applications, and serves as subject matter expert on Active Directory and Office 365 projects. He previously worked as a systems administrator at Lockheed Martin, as a support technician at Outerwall, and as operations support at GTECH. He has a bachelor’s degree in information systems from York College of Pennsylvania.
