CIO OPINION
co-location facilities and classic outsourcing.
Some watchers suspect that the journey to
enterprise cloud is only 20% completed.
Quite understandably, CIOs and others
have elected to operate on a ‘horses for
courses’ basis where workloads are matched
to deployment models based on risk levels,
information sensitivity, intellectual property,
performance needs and other concerns. But
I believe that the current pandemic is an
event that will see a significant tilt towards
broader cloud adoption.
The world has changed
After COVID-19, it seems unlikely that we
will go immediately back to a reliance on
cities, crowded roads and transit systems,
offices, galleries and stadia that place
individuals cheek by jowl with others.
Remote working will surely rise and that
makes cloud an even more attractive
proposition than ever before.
Organisations will need to re-think
operations, processes and Business
Continuity, and they will re-engineer business
models as they adapt to new realities.
In retail for example, shoppers will want
“
I BELIEVE THAT
THE CURRENT
PANDEMIC IS
AN EVENT THAT
WILL SEE A
SIGNIFICANT
TILT TOWARDS
BROADER CLOUD
ADOPTION.
different experiences from crowded shops
and high streets. That may mean broader
pavements, longer shopping hours, limited
numbers of people in-store and new ways to
pay without cash.
As Mark Kleinman, Professor of Public Policy
at Kings College London, has written:
“Almost overnight, many of the benefits
of large, global cities have become
vulnerabilities. What was previously greatly
desired – crowds, proximity, connectivity,
openness – everything that contributes
to what economists call ‘agglomeration
benefits’ and urbanists call ‘vibrancy and
vitality’ – is now feared.”
We don’t know exactly how big such
changes will be or how long they will persist
but it seems likely that they will mandate
unprecedented organisational flexibility.
If they hadn’t already realised by now,
companies will need to be more flexible,
adaptive and agile, so that the next time
there is a massive interruption to ‘business
as usual’ there can be no excuses.
Already we see companies that have been
anchored by legacy systems failing to move
fast enough and respond to the new realities
of virtual business. And this in turn will
complete the tectonic shift in favour of
cloud computing.
Reasons to move on cloud now
Of course, there are many ways to deliver
flexibility, but the cloud is a perfect vehicle in
lots of ways.
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