Saving money

When it comes to the benefits of migrating to the cloud, the first thing that comes to mind is the financial component. This is the most obvious business result for many business owners, although it is not the only one.

Roughly speaking, the financial motivations for migrating to the cloud come down to:

• increase in income;
• cost reduction.

How is it implemented in practice?

Cloud technologies can reduce costs for hardware and software, setting up the data center, and its operation. Costs for servers, 24/7 electricity for power and cooling, and IT professionals to manage the infrastructure add up quickly. Closing a data center can reduce your costs. This is usually called “getting out of the datacenter business”.

In addition, you avoid the costs of software updates and the purchase of new equipment.

The cloud can create opportunities that allow you to provide customers with new products or deliver existing products in a new way. For example, a brick-and-mortar fitness center introduces online workouts available through a subscription-based mobile app. Users can join live classes or access a library of recorded workouts, creating a new revenue stream outside of the traditional gym.

Moving to the cloud can also increase revenue from existing customers. For example, an e-commerce company improves its customer experience by implementing a cloud-based recommendation engine. By analyzing customer behavior and preferences, the platform offers personalized product recommendations, resulting in increased sales and increased profits.

Flexibility

Adapting quickly to market changes can help a business retain existing customers or win back market share from competitors.

Cloud technologies can significantly speed up product development. For example, Azure DevOps offers engineers a bunch of tools for acceleration: Azure Repos for managing code versions, Azure Test Plans for automatic testing of ready-made solutions, Azure Pipelines for deploying software for applications in different environments.

A reduction in time-to-market can motivate a manager to redirect the budget to IT transformation.

Changes in a company’s operational needs often create a need for new IT services or scaling of existing services. It can take weeks to purchase and install new hardware and virtual resources. After migrating to the cloud, the IT team can install the necessary resources in a matter of hours.

Globalization

The modern world is global. And this means that most businesses have the potential to enter international markets. Cloud technologies significantly simplify this process.

Cloud solutions shift the cost of globalization to the cloud provider. Companies can quickly deploy resources in the same region as their customers without having to purchase and maintain local data centers.

For example, today an online store that sells goods all over the world and interacts with its customers in different time zones and in different languages ​​is no surprise to anyone. In practice, the store can use Azure Bot Service and various functions in  Azure Cognitive Services , including Translator, Language Understanding (LUIS), QnA Maker, and Text Analytics. This ensures that their customers can get information when they need it and that it is provided to them in their language.

In addition, with the help of cloud technologies, it is possible to manage the assortment displayed on the pages of the store, adapting it to geographic tastes, preferences and product availability at that time.

Working in global markets imposes additional restrictions on business due to regulatory aspects (especially if we are talking about the fintech or healthcare industry). Cloud technologies offer compliance solutions that help customers meet regulatory requirements in regulated industries and global markets.

That is, cloud providers guarantee safe storage and processing of confidential data.

For example, let an American provider of healthcare services receive a contract in Europe. European law requires that their data remain in each specific European country. Therefore, the American company deploys its software using fully scripted DevOps processes.

Productivity

In our world, it is accepted as an axiom that applications work quickly and without crashes. If such expectations are suddenly not met, it causes significant damage to the company’s reputation.

Cloud technologies simplify data backup and disaster recovery, as data can be mirrored across multiple backup sites in the cloud provider’s network.

One of the most important functions of IT is to ensure that corporate data is never lost and applications remain available in the event of server failures, power outages or natural disasters. You can protect your data and ensure its recovery by backing it up in the cloud.

Carbon footprint

Today, it is very important to build a responsible business that cares for the environment. Cloud technologies can help your organization reduce its carbon footprint, use resources more efficiently, and reduce its impact on the environment. Statistics show that migrating to the cloud reduces carbon dioxide emissions into the ecosystem by 98%.

If you doubt the importance of this point, pay attention to government initiatives:

• The UK government aims to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050.
• The US government plans to achieve zero emissions by 2050.
• The European climate law provides for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030.
• The goal of the European Union is to achieve zero emissions by 2050.

Of course, these are far from all the business drivers that should motivate you to migrate to the cloud. But I hope you have already made a decision for yourself.