Like it or not, we are living, no….thriving, in a cloud ecosystem economy and there is no turning back.
What is a Cloud Ecosystem Economy?
Just as a biological ecosystem consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact, the cloud ecosystem is a complex system of increasingly interdependent components all working together. The cloud ecosystem economy is the great catalyst that levels the playing field for all businesses. This is an explosive ecosystem that expands the reach and scope of every business that taps into it. It has also increased the power of the individual and made available vast amounts of knowledge flows. That’s one of the reasons why Rene Buest’s, article How Tech CEOs Participate in Ecosystems, describes this phenomenon as a continually evolving ecosystem that forms the basis of innovative digital solutions and products. It’s why Jeanne Ross prescribes cloud services as the foundation for all digital offerings; thereby become the bedrock for digital transformation.
It is true to say that the Cloud is just someone else’s computer. That is one way to think about it, but it’s far from presenting the whole story. What cloud technology makes possible goes considerably beyond computing capabilities. We’re talking about many kinds of immense databases and knowledge flows the cloud taps into. We’re talking about synergy and exponential growth (see Moore’s Law).
Imagine if you owned a business at the beginning of the 20th Century and hadn’t yet adopted telephone technology. How long could you have remained competitive in such an environment? While business leaders don’t need to understand the ins and outs of the technology, they must understand how the technology impacts the future of their business.
In a recent report, the data analysis company Ecosystem cites three reasons CEOs need to get involved in and have visibility into an organization’s cloud investment.
Cloud Enables Transformation
Enterprise companies have matured in their Cloud adoption. Decisions are no longer driven by the benefits of shifting Cloud from CapEx to OpEx. The top 3 Cloud benefits sought by companies are
1. Improved Service Levels & Agility
2. Increased Work Process Efficiency
3. Flexibility & Scalability
The idea is that the Cloud Ecosystem is a group of technologies and resources that empower infrastructure and open the doors to a world of digital value propositions not yet imagined. The Cloud Ecosystem is an enabler of doing business, real-time data access for productivity increase, and process automation. This impacts the entire organization and involves prioritizing the needs of certain functions over others. These are not decisions the CIO should make alone.
The Cloud is Not Cheap
Cloud adoption may not reduce costs. Ecosystem360 found that over a third of the organizations surveyed find the Cloud more expensive than traditional licensing or owning the hardware. As businesses use the Cloud to scale, several aspects are dynamic and require constant reassessment. In many cases, companies have found themselves having to find and recruit new teams to manage and maintain the Cloud environment. This is not an issue with IronOrbit. Because IronOrbit offers an all-inclusive solution, you don’t have the high, unexpected, added cost of third-party IT resources. Instead, you get a predictable monthly fee.
Joining the Cloud Ecosystem Gives You Access to Emerging Technologies
Tom Wujec is a fellow at AutoDesk and a global leader in 3-D design, engineering, and entertainment software. He said, “When any industry becomes computable, it goes through a series of predictable changes: It moves from being digitalized to being disrupted to being democratized.”
The Democratization of Disruptive Technologies
While it is true the technology and business world is disruptive; it is also becoming increasingly democratized. The Cloud Ecosystem is a principle conveyor of new technology adoptions. Companies have to be a part of the Cloud Ecosystem to leverage emerging technologies (democratization) or face disruptions from competitors who beat them to the Cloud. Returning to the Ecosystem article, “Cloud is no longer only required for infrastructure and back-up, but improving business processes, by enabling real-time data and systems access. Similarly, IoT devices will grow exponentially.
The Cloud Ecosystem Economy was well on its way before the recent pandemic, which only further accelerated the use of cloud-based solutions. The Ecosystem findings suggest Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) will remain the key area of focus, especially Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS).
“The gap between science-fiction and science is getting narrow now,” said Andrew Hessel, a former research scientist at AutoDesk and now co-chair of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology at Singularity University. “As soon as soon as someone has an idea and articulates it, it can be manifested in a very short period.”
The Cloud Ecosystem has left the purview of the IT department and is now part of the board room discussions. Technology is no longer just a point solution. It is a collaboration between humans and machines because, with the help of the Cloud Ecosystem, business leaders can understand the whole range of viable possibilities beyond what any human mind can comprehend on its own. It is time to take advantage of what’s possible. Be inspired by technology and what it can do to increase value to your customers.
Business leaders recognize that taking advantage of the Cloud Ecosystem Economy is about creating a platform for efficiency, innovation, and growth. In a 2021 Harvard Business Review Survey amongst CEOs, 87% said that Cloud would be a critical component to achieving sustainability goals to a moderate or significant degree. The article also reported that only 37% of C-level executives had fully achieved the outcomes they expected from their cloud initiatives. Rene Buest reports, “Only about 3 in 10 CEOs reported complete confidence in their organization’s cloud migration initiatives to deliver expected value at the expected time.
Many variables come into moving legacy systems into the Cloud. There are many pitfalls on the way to cloud migration. Certainly, a big part of the challenge is having the skills on hand to take advantage of the Cloud. More often than not, companies can be so eager to take advantage of what cloud technology offers that leadership makes their choice on price and expediency alone. It looks like a good deal at the moment and they go for it without regard to how it will fit with their company.
Don’t make the same mistake. IronOrbit offers comprehensive, professionally managed services for a predictable monthly fee. We build it for you so that it works. You don’t need to wonder if you have the right skills in-house to make full use of it. At the same time, you’ll have all the flexibility and control that you want.
We invite you to check out our INFINITY Workspaces demo and then do your own proof-on-concept.
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