What Is Cloud-First Enterprise Tech?
Technology is changing and evolving at such a fast pace that it’s hard for people who are not in the tech industry to keep up. Businesses caught a break when computing solutions began offering expanded storage for keeping important records stored on the hard drives of PCs. This changed with the advent of external storage devices that allowed hard drives to transfer their full storage partition to thumb drives and external hard drives for the sake of operational space. One of the latest developments in storage and operational technology spaces is the development of the Cloud. It became one of the most celebrated innovations with new storage and other useful technologies. Cloud technology has since evolved to include dedicated private clouds, as well as legacy platforms to support infrastructure needs.
What is Cloud-First Enterprise Tech?
The cloud-first enterprise is a description of the willingness for businesses and enterprises to use cloud services to achieve a greater level of efficiency for their operations. It is designed to provide innovations that spark further innovation for clients while enhancing productivity. It’s a mindset that is a current trend driving business transformation toward the use of a multi-cloud environment. Leaders in the IT industry believe that cloud infrastructure will envelop larger workloads within a few short years. While some enterprises are holding back, analysts expect an additional 16 percent of businesses will make the transition to could infrastructure within the coming five years. We could go a step further and say that cloud-first enterprise is a philosophy for making positive change.
Benefits of cloud technology for big business
Cloud infrastructure is designed to meet the needs of enterprise demands for reliability, speed, and storage. It’s not just for expanding storage space but for a complex array of systems and operations that can lower the overhead cost of organizations using the infrastructure for production environments.
The potential is high for cloud-first enterprise the behemoths
According to Techcrunch, cloud-first enterprise tech is a billion-dollar B2B industry with tremendous potential. It is because of B2B tech that companies are growing faster than at any time in history. It’s referred to as the billion-dollar B2B paradigm. It’s a new trend that has opened a space for cloud-first enterprise tech companies to achieve high market capitalization that could exceed $100 billion and it’s because of the shift in how organizations buy enterprise technology currently. Examples of this B2B explosion include several companies that have soared past the $1 billion revenue mark with market caps that have exceeded 10 times the initial public offerings including Okta, Atlassian, Coupa, Twilio, Shopify and others. It’s further suggested that the emerging market for cloud services is only going to grow.
Cloud-first enterprises are the new wave in big tech
IOffice Corp reports that analysts are predicting a growth in the worldwide market for cloud service by 80 percent. This would take it from the current $182 billion in reported revenue to around $331 billion by the year 2022. This is just 12 months out. A portion of the growth seen is in SaaS cloud application services. More organizations are prioritizing cloud investments high on their list, affecting market offerings with roughly a third of them participating. Investors are making investments in cloud-first and the trend is expected to make a further shift to cloud-only in the years to come. The new normal may become SaaS solutions with the on-premise software providers taking a back seat. The on-premise software solutions are becoming a thing of the past as cloud-first solutions offer a less expensive approach to technology. This is the single leading factor in decisions to adopt a cloud-first enterprise mindset. It reduces the complexity for IT departments, lowers the cost of IP operations, and streamlines the operations of organizations. Everything they need is available through cloud-based solutions and it makes better business sense to go with the less expensive and more convenient option. These factors are providing cloud-first enterprises with a competitive edge as more companies are adopting cloud-first strategies. The expectation is for that growth to triple over the next 12 months.
Developing a cloud-first strategy
It’s been further predicted that more than half of the largest organizations in the world will implement a cloud-only strategy by 2025. In the meantime, a cloud-first plan will help in making the transition. This is a goal that will not be realized immediately as it is a process that takes a commitment by large companies to a cloud-first mindset. It involves a transition to cloud-based solutions over premises-based software. It still uses a combination of the two business solutions which provides flexibility for companies who are making the gradual switch, but it does give preference to the cloud-based solutions.
Companies begin with buy-in from the executive teams to consider business objectives and identify the initial areas where cloud migration will be the most beneficial with plans to measure the outcomes for further moves toward cloud-based technologies. Efficiency, performance, and productivity are key outcomes to be measured in feasibility studies to continue further migration toward the cloud. As companies see forward progress and savings with cloud migration activities, digital transformations, which are inevitable due to the current trajectory toward technology, more companies are likely to continue the migration to cloud-first infrastructures until the movement brings them to a state of cloud-only activities. This is likely to translate into a shift in position development with more workers skilled in cloud-only technology, opening up some new jobs across the gamut of industries, and resulting in the loss of others. It’s also likely to impact educational offerings and IT content to prepare for these new specialties. Expertise in cloud security will become a new requirement for companies who adopt cloud-first strategies. We’re moving into a new era that could further change the world we live and work in.
