A staggering 96% of total data centre traffic is through the cloud. Global cloud spending has touched 1177 billion USD and is growing. But why do businesses flock to the cloud? This technology blog lists five key motivators that drive cloud migration.

1. Cost Reduction

The single biggest motivation for businesses to migrate to the cloud is direct cost benefits. AWS estimates the cloud to reduce operational costs by as much as 51%.

NewsCorp saved $100 million in three years by migrating to the cloud. IDC projects reduced the total cost of operations by 31% over three years, after migrating to the cloud. Examples of such cost savings abound.

The cloud spares businesses from investing capital into IT infrastructure. Cloud services transfer capital investments into recurring operating expenses. Businesses do not have to purchase or maintain servers or other on-site hardware. They also save on real estate and power costs. The cloud attributes operational expenses to the service using the resource. The business may bill customers accordingly.

2. Agility and Flexibility

The cloud offers speed with stability and improves the agility and resilience of the enterprise network. It enables simple ways for the stakeholders to collaborate and roll out new solutions.

The resource needs for any enterprise evolve as business circumstances change. The enterprise may go through peaks and troughs. They may need extra resources when launching a new product. The cloud allows changing course quickly. Enterprises may scale up fast and scale down when the requirements cease. They may sign-up for extra capacity when needed and hit the ground running. Setup takes just hours.

The old-fashioned way of ordering hardware and waiting for delivery no longer works. The company-wide installation process may take weeks or even months. By the time the setup is complete, the business needs or even the technology itself might have changed.

A 2017 HBR study cites business agility and flexibility as the main reasons businesses embrace the cloud.

3. Resiliency and Business Continuity

Downtime can be fatal for a business. Non-availability of portals and other resources, even for a short while, causes significant damage. For 90% of enterprises, a single hour of downtime costs over $100,000.

The cloud ensures high uptime with unlimited failover capacity. Redundant cloud servers, in different parts of the globe, enable rapid, strategic scalability. Redundant servers offer easy backup as well.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the shift to work-from-home has shifted the discussion around cloud migration from “if” to “when.” The cloud enables enterprises to pivot operations in double-quick time.

Even before the pandemic, migration to the cloud was the go-to strategy to withstand external shocks. Natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods often disrupt offices. With business software and key data stored in the cloud, businesses may operate from a non-affected area without a sweat.

4. Easier Digital Transformation

Migrating digital business assets to the cloud smoothens digital transformation.

Enterprises use cloud resources to restructure organizational models, expand globally, and create better customer experiences. Enterprises that store their digital assets in the cloud reduce their geographical constraints. They may operate round-the-clock, and source talent globally. Key executives may work from anywhere, accessing the cloud through their smartphones or laptops. Response times become faster, and customer satisfaction levels increase.

The cloud also delivers technology integration, which can make or break mergers and acquisitions. Cloud servers make it easier to integrate digital assets, easing mergers and acquisitions. When everything is in the cloud, data silos get eradicated. Data analytics also gets better as the analytics tool performs the analysis with complete data.

The unlimited scale and flexibility offered by the cloud enable innovation. Cloud servers such as AWS offer economical solutions to meet the huge data storage and computational requirements to run proof-of-concept tests, test new applications extensively, and secure landing zones for acquisitions. As a case in point, Vantage Power, which set up a cloud-based ecosystem using AWS could process 100,000+data points per minute across its IoT ecosystem.

5. Improved Security

Migration to the cloud improves security.

Most on-premises networks grow organically, and soon become complex. The hotch-potch of technologies and software do not integrate. IT admins end up using different management frameworks. Such complex networks create visibility blocks and impede threat detection or enforcement.

Cloud service providers invest heavily in security. They provide robust security and encryption that protects against most cyber-attacks. Advanced network monitoring and security tools, combined with near-infinite capacity, enable them to absorb and scatter DDoS attacks easily. They also help to define and manage access policies and policy-driven controls.

Cloud providers invest heavily in security innovation, to remain one-up on cybercriminals. They also use uniform security capabilities throughout their fabric. This reduces the attack footprint and leaves fewer holes for cybercriminals to exploit.

AWS customers reported 43.4%fewer monthly security incidents in 2018.

6. Future Proof the Business

Any enterprise accumulates technical debt over time. Hardware and software eventually reach their end-of-life. Enterprises face tough choices on whether to extend the lease or upgrade.

Migrating to the cloud when the time comes to retire legacy infrastructure is a no-brainer. Even otherwise, it might be a sound idea to upgrade to cloud-based systems. Cloud migration does away with end-of-life concerns and future-proofs the business.

The cloud provider upgrades to the latest technology as clients wouldn’t subscribe to their services otherwise. The pay-and-go business model of the cloud means that the provider handles all upgrades as well. But avoid inflexible contracts that lock you up for the long term.

The cloud spares enterprise IT of the hassles of managing data centres. Freed up from such administrative drags, they may focus their time and energies on activities that add value. Enterprises that migrate to the cloud sort out most of their IT hassles, and reap rich rewards.