The cloud is everywhere. Whether working from home or attending online classes, operating your bank account digitally, or booking a transportation service, cloud technology has become essential to everyday life. Today’s organizations, from startups to multi-national companies, understand and accept how this one technology alone has fueled operations and business growth. Ignoring the opportunities, the cloud offers is akin to writing your business obituary. Particularly in the post-pandemic era.
While cloud adoption was gaining ground even before 2020, the pandemic consolidated its position as the go-to technology for enabling work and business operations anytime, anywhere. The pandemic forced businesses and government agencies to shift from legacy systems to the cloud to accelerate their Digital Transformation 4.0 journey.
The Key Benefits of Migrating to the Cloud
By choosing the cloud as their digitalization enabler, organizations can innovate swiftly, scale efficiently, increase speed-to-market, and minimize technological obsolescence risks. The top advantages that cloud migration offered and continues to provide businesses with include:
Seamless accessibility
The cloud helps build highly connected IT environments wherein team members can collaborate and exchange information while working from any location. Platforms such as AWS, Google Workspace, Azure, Salesforce, and Adobe Creative Cloud enable users to access and update data in real-time from anywhere through any device while keeping others with access to the same data in the loop.
Scope for automation
Compared to on-premises systems that primarily rely on manual processes, cloud technology creates more possibilities for automating rote tasks. Enterprises can make it simpler to build a digital infrastructure with automated backups of data, provisioned version control for workflows, user access control, and as-a-service models. They allow people to work in tandem with automation so that the workforce can be deployed for tasks requiring higher cognitive abilities.
Flexible scalability and elasticity
Organizations operating on the cloud do not need to spend weeks scaling up or down their digital resources as they would typically do with legacy IT infrastructure. Cloud service providers can quickly add or reduce nodes, servers, and storage space to address dynamic business needs and the amount of data being handled.
Cloud elasticity is a similar concept. It enables the system to expand or contract in line with workload demands. The main difference between scalability and elasticity is the time factor. Cloud elasticity handles short-term requirements, such as a spike in website traffic during festive offers. With scalability, businesses can extend the scope of their cloud resources for long-term, strategic growth.
Cloud Migration Opportunities for Manufacturing Industry
According to a report, “Redefining Manufacturing for the Digital Era,” published by Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, the manufacturing industry is leading all other industries in cloud adoption, with 32 percent of manufacturers having achieved “cloud leader” status. The report also indicates that manufacturers who have adopted the cloud expect the technology to expand into every single area of their business in the next couple of years.
Redefining Manufacturing for the Digital Era
32 percent of manufacturers having achieved “cloud leader” status
Other findings of the report also include:
- Cloud-based technologies are the driving force behind the manufacturing industry’s rapid business transformation
- By implementing cloud migration, 40% of European manufacturers made significant progress in key activities such as IT administration, production, planning, procurement, and supply chain operations
- The adoption of the cloud has led to an increase in productivity for 56% of all manufacturers
- Manufacturers at all levels of cloud adoption reported an increase of 51% in the quality of their planning and decision-making