Organizations are facing today different macroeconomic, technology and market challenges that can have a relevant impact on their stability and continuity. Cloud Computing solutions for the industry enable them to follow technology trends and face internal and external forces, as well as to succeed, regardless of them being economy, social, performance and operational forces.
We may highlight 6 internal and external forces that can be faced by organizations today, and underline how Cloud solutions can attain competitive advantages from them.
Economic environment. Crisis and competition in current globalized markets compel the organizations to reduce their profit margins. Cloud Computing-based solutions enable them to reduce IT infrastructures, maintenance and lifecycle costs. These solutions allow costs and times to be cut by increasing cooperation and reducing the time-to-market:
- Globalized markets: collaboration with providers. Organizations can increase their efficiency and performance through the collaboration and integration with their providers; however, this involves controlling and sharing information that can be confidential. With Cloud solutions, access to the internal information systems is no longer necessary, but simply sharing relevant information by means of collaboration in Cloud solutions.
- Reduce vulnerabilities and keep cyber secure systems. Organizations must take care of their systems so they are always updated and patched to ensure security. Thanks to Cloud Computing-based solutions, organizations will have their systems updated with the latest patches and service packs, since this is one of the features provided by Clos solutions like Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS).
- New generations. The most recent employees in organizations are those born between 1980 and 2000, the so called digital generation. This implies that the organizations must redesign their working environment, for example the use of smartphones or tablets in management, supervision and industrial control, or data availability to perform analysis remotely.
- Cloud Computing solutions provide access to geographically dispersed remote places, simplifying access in real-time and enabling the collaboration among different sites.
- Big Data. The emergence of industrial equipment communicated by Ethernet has increased exponentially the amount of data generated by systems, applications and devices. The collection, aggregation, analysis and storage of these data is known as Big Data, and organizations know that the access to this kind of information must be enabled to the suitable person, in the suitable time, simply and quickly. Cloud Computing-based solutions can manage, storage and analyse Big Data. This kind of solutions keeps data secure and more accessible.
- Future-proof investments. Organizations must usually justify every investment they made according to its return on investment (ROI) in order to ensure the return of the invested capital. Cloud Computing-based solutions use a hardware that is managed, monitored and supported by the service provider, so this is the responsible for the investment depreciation and return. Capital expenditures are replaced by small and predictable annual fees that can be adjusted anytime.