Within the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw a clear focus on crisis management, as a large part of society responded to the pandemic and made the decision to go into some kind of lockdown, organizations around the world were affected. We witnessed a massive shift in employment: from being centralized in offices to working remotely at home.
Organizations were desperate to take advantage of and adopt new technologies to ensure their continuity, not only did they have to guarantee access to archives to be able to continue working in the new work environment. They also had to make sure their services were completely stable and safe.
Organizations that had already run their operations in the cloud and had adopted online collaboration and productivity services, were able to cope in these difficult months of the pandemic, facilitated the remote work of their collaborators, and largely ensured the adaptation of organizations to the conditions more fluidly. In addition, they were able to maintain their level of attention in a context of uncertainty, they valued this type of response more than ever.
The global health crisis served as a catalyst to recognize the power of the cloud and the advantages of having it as an ally in the processes in organizations – for example – in strategic aspects such as the decentralization of services, the savings and economic benefits, and the high availability of services, allowed them to increase disaster recovery capabilities.
Cloud technology has become a little more than a mandatory alternative within any organization. Migrating to this solution is unstoppable; and more with a digital transformation that has opened a new economic and social era. According to the Accenture study Insights from the ‘CLOUD’ survey: Expectations vs. Reality, nearly half of the organizations with the highest degree of cloud service adoption say they have fully achieved the expected benefits.
When they talk about the totality of the expected benefits, they allude to cost savings, improvement in the level of service, and response times. “More than 45% of respondents have met their intended objectives,” the Accenture report states. To reach this figure, the cloud model is essential, 92% of respondents said they had at least some of their IT environment (infrastructure, applications, data analytics, etc.) in the Cloud today.
Migrating to the cloud means standardization, simplification of processes, and consolidation of services. On average, 93% of respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with the results obtained.
Organizations rely on the cloud to:
- Reduce paperwork.
- Automate industrial workflows.
- Launch new innovative services.
- Expand or improve interaction with your beneficiaries
- Increase productivity in your employees.
Steps to achieve a digital transformation to the cloud in a secure and reliable way
- Before performing any action towards the cloud it is advisable to know the differences between the public, private and hybrid cloud.
- Closing the skills gap – hiring, training, and retaining staff with skills in all relevant cloud technologies.
- Plan for success, consider how your systems and applications are used, to account for security requirements, and then correlate this with the functionality offered by various platforms and cloud providers.
- Find a partner who has the expertise to advise on the best infrastructure and cloud options. If that partner can also provide additional tools and expertise to manage or support an implementation would be the ideal scenario.
- Protect critical assets across the organization, including network, servers, and cloud-based infrastructure, in compliance with government regulations, industry standards, and IT security best practices.
Cloud Barriers
The study has identified certain barriers related to the adoption of the cloud and the achievement of the expectations generated by this technology. The three main obstacles mentioned by Accenture, although with the different impacts depending on the market, security, and compliance risks, according to the complexity of the organization and the problems generated by the infrastructure. The lack of knowledge about cloud within organizations also emerges as a barrier on certain occasions. The other big conclusion is related to knowledge. Acquiring these new skills is one of the main challenges in any organization.
And while great strides have been made in cloud adoption and implementation, there are still unrealized benefits for organizations that can overcome existing barriers. Such as whether or not this tool meets the expectations set by the vast majority of organizations, the data shows, or at least it appears in the report, that the cloud is an essential tool for organizations.
Reference source: https://www.cloudmasters.es/como-la-adopcion-de-la-nube-se-ha-convertido-en-algo-esencial-para-la-transformacion-digital-sabias-que/ https://elpais.com/retina/2020/01/17/tendencias/1579249847_857262.html