Interesting briefing on the Wall Street Journal YouTube channel about cloud computing and the ROI of migrating to the cloud.
According to the briefing many CIOs are feeling that the cost savings promised for migrating to the cloud did not materialize, an insight mentioned in the video states that 2 of 3 tech leaders in the US think that they are yet to see significant returns on their cloud investment.
But in my opinion migrating to the cloud is not just about cost savings, it shouldn’t be.. the benefits of cloud computing is the same for any sized business, from startups to corporates: a business is enabled to offer the best service possible in the fastest way possible.
A Bank’s job is not to run a data center, A startup’s focus shouldn’t be on procuring servers or updating operating systems. And while running a data center is not an easy job, it becomes more challenging if your business is offering services in different countries, with different data residency requirements.
Cloud platforms eliminate all these obstacles: start small and grow in your own pace. A business can deploy its application in different regions and expand your presence in more countries with ease, manage spikes in demand efficiently with no need for capital investment.
And the concept is not new, For example successful restaurants lease their branches, they don’t buy stores. In converting the tech expenditure to an ongoing operational cost, budgets become agile and flexible: A business can adjust spending on the go, no need to put money upfront and realize later it was a bad idea.
No business today can really thrive without a digital presence, be it banks, restaurants, sporting clubs, what have you.. Cloud computing is here to stay, businesses can worry about their features and offerings, and let a professional provider supply the platform, a business still needs a technical team, but the in house team’s focus should be on developing the business logic, evolving the business and adding digital features, instead of worrying about software batching or infrastructure management.