The world is going digital at a rapid pace, and businesses and organizations are shifting their operations from offline to online. In fact, the pandemic made this transition a necessity for companies across various industries to ensure continuity in the new normal, brimming with uncertainties. Concepts like Work from Home (WFH) became pivotal during this time and will certainly stay relevant in the years to come.
As part of this accelerated digital transformation, one of the biggest tech upgrades most leaders invested in is cloud computing. Thanks to SaaS (software as a service) players, bringing innovative enterprise cloud solutions to assist and boost businesses in their digital transformation journeys. According to a joint report by McKinsey and SaasBoomi, the SaaS sector is likely to become a $1 trillion market by 2030. In fact, India has the third-largest SaaS ecosystem with 13 SaaS unicorns globally, which clearly indicates this sector’s high growth potential in the near future.
Against this backdrop, let’s look at the emerging opportunities that cloud adoption brings to the table and why businesses, irrespective of their size, should invest in it:
Flexibility
Traditional IT setups require extensive capital to be spent on hardware upgrades and installations during the growth phase of a business. And this process takes a lot of time as the company might need to wait longer until all the upgrades are implemented. Picture this: As a business owner, you have recently invested in hardware upgrades. But suddenly, your business slows down. Would you be able to downsize your investment at this juncture? No. Your money is stuck, and you can’t really do anything about it but only wait. On the contrary, cloud technology allows you to scale back during the downtimes and scale up during your high growth period. With such high flexibility, the cloud helps businesses thrive even during the most challenging times.
Analytics
Data is the new oil of the digital era. In today’s digital world, our gadgets produce heavy amounts of data. If analyzed well, it can help businesses make much informed decisions and ensure customers are highly delighted with their offerings. Cloud technology exactly does this using automation and advanced AI and ML tools. It enables businesses to record and analyze customer data and give detailed insights into business trends, performance, customer preference, and whatnot. These insights provide companies with a clear picture of where they are going wrong, what their customer wants, how they can innovate their products, enhance user experience, and much more. So that they can make the right business decisions on time before it’s too late.
Automation
Organizations using traditional IT infrastructure face challenges in combining multiple tools in the same workflow when automating their operations. Why? Because different tools have different requirements in terms of operating systems, computing powers, etc. But with cloud technology, a business can simply choose the tools they want and easily amalgamate them for seamless automation. The cloud partner takes care of all the computing and infrastructure requirements. This also allows the business to focus more on other critical tasks like strategizing to improve and innovate their overall automation process, rather than spending time, effort, and resources setting it up.
Security
As companies adopt digital technologies, they also become prone to cyberattacks. The shift to a more flexible work environment is a lucrative opportunity for threat actors to launch ransomware attacks and breach enterprise data. However, cloud providers take adequate security measures like multi-factor authentication and constant security updates to detect and prevent breaches using the latest technologies. Businesses must also educate their employees and drive awareness around phishing emails and other such attacks. They must also have an incident response plan in the event of a cyberattack to respond and remediate it and thus ensure that its impact is reduced.
Wrapping up
Cloud computing is revolutionizing the business landscape in India and the world over. The public cloud services in our country are projected to reach $7.3 billion this year. Thanks to the leading SaaS companies for offering innovative services and the government for taking laudable initiatives like Cloud Vision for India 2022 and Meghraj to benefit small and medium businesses (SMBs) and those in their early stage of cloud adoption. As more and more enterprises adopt new-age technologies like big data, AI, ML, and IoT, investing in robust cloud infrastructure will gain more relevance, helping organizations grow and thrive in the post-pandemic world.
By Sudhir Kothari, CEO and Managing Director, Embee Software Pvt Ltd.
