When the corporate world was posed the question in a LinkedIn meme; Who drove your digital transformation efforts, COVID-19 or your CIO? Most will admit, COVID-19 provided the much-needed motivation and momentum to transform their operations. It was simply not a choice.
For most of our customers, the initial challenge was getting remote working solutions and initiating a business continuity plan, then it evolved into more robust transformation efforts. A significant number of our customers were forced through COVID-19 to make a leap of faith to cloud and have not looked back, in fact, many are realising the benefits in more ways than they expected.
Organisations who continue examining their ability to innovate and compete are the ones who will be successful. It is our experience at Logicalis that cloud-enabled transformations provide business with a blueprint for innovation and the ability to pivot quickly to changing market dynamics.
The evolving landscape
In a couple of years from now, we’ll have the benefit of hindsight to see what a disruptive year 2020 was to how we live, work and play. Every sector has been affected in some way, consumers are looking for different experiences, employees are looking for different experiences and organisations themselves have to change the way they operate to be able to meet these needs.
In response, organisations over the next 12 months will need to focus on some or all of the following:
- Meeting the rapidly changing needs of their customers in order to continue to provide value
- Ensuring their employees are productive, collaborative and satisfied with the level of flexibility in their working lives
- Driving operational efficiencies in their business so they can deliver greater value and profitability whilst reducing overheads
So what makes cloud the tool that will enable your transformation goals?
You will gain efficiencies
Significant cost efficiencies can be realised by drastically reducing the total cost of ownership and shifting IT costs to an OPEX model. Not only do you just pay for what you use, but in a managed service model, you don’t have to maintain the skills in house.
You can scale up your operations quickly
Unlimited compute resources allow organisations to not only scale their IT and digital but also their business operations, at speed. This allows for onboarding new customers quickly or setting up a new location quickly anywhere in the world.
You can respond to market demand with agility
Businesses can improve their agility by leveraging DevOps and reducing time to market, allowing them to more easily react to changing internal and market demands.
You can innovate and compete with new technologies
The cloud offers organisations an opportunity to leverage new technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain, and develop innovative new products/services. This helps you compete in a rapidly changing market.
Ultimately cloud delivers greater business agility, more flexibility to scale operations and new opportunities to innovate and outpace competitors.
As ‘Architects of Change’ Logicalis know what is required for a successful transition to the cloud. Our Production Ready Cloud solution uses a proven approach to set up the Azure Cloud at speed, in a controlled and compliant way while minimising cost, so you have the confidence of getting it right the first time, in record time.
If you'd like to align your cloud strategy with your transformation goals, get in touch with Logicalis to assess where you are at and how to progress. If you just want to keep reading on this topic, check out our whitepaper below.
