By Madhan Raj J, AVP, Cobalt Cloud Solution Strategist, Infosys
Enabling the world to start operating remotely overnight, cloud more than proved its worth during the pandemic. And it continues to do so in countless ways. Cloud is the rock that allows businesses and other institutions to withstand uncertainty; it helps to build resilient supply chains; cloud offers scalability, flexibility, and access to the latest technologies as software as a service, to fuel unprecedented innovation.
It will only get better. By 2030, cloud could add $3 trillion to the EBITDA of the world’s 2,000 largest companies. 85 percent of organisations are expected to take a “cloud-first” approach by 2025, by which time almost all new digital workloads will be launched on cloud-native platforms. It is estimated that 2024 will see 40 percent of Indian companies using some sort of cloud service.
As enterprises increase in cloud maturity, providers are catering to their expanding needs with innovative cloud services. On their part, organisations should seize emerging cloud opportunities to remain competitive in a tough market. Here are some things to consider in the future:
Consider moving to an industry-cloud platform
Also called vertical cloud platforms, Industry Cloud Platforms (ICPs) offer software, platform and infrastructure as a service capabilities meeting the specific business, data and compliance needs of different industries. An ICP offers far more specialised and tailored services to its particular industry than a generic platform, and also integrates better with the other systems and solutions being used to facilitate data sharing and collaboration between business partners. Popular ICPs include Salesforce Financial Services Cloud which unlocks data from core banking, wealth, and insurance platforms to enable financial services organisations with insights for better financial planning and personalised engagement, and Microsoft Cloud for Retail whose list of benefits includes supply chain resilience, superior shopping experience, and workforce empowerment.
Other advantages of an industry cloud platform are easy adaptability of processes and applications, composability enabling partners to deliver innovations via marketplaces, access to a wide industry ecosystem, and cross-industry learning & innovation. It is expected that by 2027, more than 70 percent of organisations will use an industry cloud platform.
Combine the power of AI and cloud
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud. It is hard to think of one without the other. Cloud is the ideal infrastructure for AI, since it can easily provide the massive computing power, storage capacity, and scalability demanded by algorithms, natural language processing applications, predictive analytics, etc. Cloud also powers digital transformation to streamline business processes and make rich, high-fidelity enterprise data available to AI. Analysing consumer sentiment, identifying market trends, preventing fraud and equipment breakdown, and forecasting demand are just some of the things that AI-powered cloud services can do to improve operational efficiency, mitigate risk, and drive better decisions in every business: Amazon’s AI-powered recommendation engine is instrumental in improving customer engagement and sales; an AI-powered cloud solution from Microsoft can help deliver better patient care and also streamline administrative tasks like scheduling and documentation to allow healthcare practitioners to devote more time to patient care. As enterprises progress in their AI journey they will find the most powerful, sophisticated, and versatile AI solutions on cloud.
Reap the benefits of cloud-native development
“Cloud-native” is more than technology; it is also a culture and way of working. With technical features such as microservices, containerization, and dynamic orchestration, cloud-native application development allows enterprises to unlock the full range of cloud advantages: being highly scalable, responsive and resilient; and extending to new ways of working, enterprises can use DevOps practices to develop, modify and deploy applications quickly and iteratively. On top of that, cloud-native development is great for innovation – think rapid innovation cycles, and microservices and cutting-edge cloud tools that support iterative innovation and rapid prototyping. No surprise then, that the best, most innovative, services, from Netflix to Airbnb, are powered by cloud-native applications. Cloud-native development is the future and enterprises should waste no time in embracing it.
Give cloud the edge
Like AI, edge computing has great synergy with cloud computing. Public and private cloud can take care of the big requirements, such as advanced analytics, long-term storage, and complex, but not time-sensitive, computing, leaving local, time-sensitive computing tasks, such as real-time surveillance or autonomous vehicle navigation, to be performed at the edge. What’s more, by processing data close to its point of origination – think user devices or local edge servers – edge computing complements public cloud in the cloud computing continuum, to counter limitations, such as latency, bandwidth consumption, and delayed response, arising from centralised data centres. For workloads where network tolerance is low (mining operations) or connectivity is poor (remote manufacturing plants) or the cost of data transfer is high (deep sea oil rig), edge computing is required in addition to a centralised data centre/ cloud located far away. The flexibility and scalability of edge computing allows enterprises to leverage and reap the benefits of the growth in IoT (Internet of Things) and other edge-centric applications.
In the early days, cloud was considered a cost-efficiency lever; it has come a long way since then, providing scalability, agility, resilience, and data & applications to help overcome our biggest challenges. Today, cloud is considered one of the most important digital technologies. Innovations such as industry cloud platforms and AI-powered services will only underscore its significance.