Cloud is the answer, what was the question?

In today’s world, you cannot have a business or a weather conversation without talking about cloud. Every business is looking to innovate and reduce cost, and cloud fits this strategy nicely. But sometimes in all the hype we forget to understand why is cloud worthy of consideration for a business. Like a person with a hammer looking for a nail, we try to solve every problem with a “cloud”. A cloud strategy has lots of advantages but is very important to understand why Cloud is right for you.

In no particular order, here are some of the reasons why you may want to consider a cloud solution

• Infrastructure scalability – One of the most common reasons to choose cloud is the flexibility it offers around infrastructure, giving you the freedom to grow your business. It also allows you to downsize when required or even cater for temporary peaks. Like a self-storage unit, you can grow and shrink with your requirements.
• Commercial Model – Having the flexibility to spend Opex and not Capex can be very attractive in certain industries. Start-up businesses, can avoid the risk of upfront capital investment and use their growth to invest in solutions. Like leasing a car instead of forking out to buy it upfront.
• Functional Scope – Certain software solutions may only be available as a cloud offering. If what you are looking for as a solution only exists in the cloud, then that may be the reason to move to cloud, just like buying that specific mobile phone because it has a specific feature you just love.
•  Time to Innovate – Cloud solutions in general have more frequent functional and technical updates. You constantly get new and improved business processes without having to spend on precious resources keeping systems up to date. Like automatically getting the latest TV whenever a manufacturer releases a new model.
• Support Model – If you do not like the hassle of managing and maintaining your solutions then Cloud might be the answer. Like going on an all-inclusive holiday.
• Keep to Standard – Might sound like a strange one but in general cloud means less modifications. This forces businesses to keep to the standard functionality, reducing Total cost of ownership. If you rented a house (as opposed to buying it), you would not renovate it.

While looking for cloud it is important to understand why it right for you. Conversely, if you do not think cloud is for you, have you really got the right reason for rejecting it? You need the right mindset when looking at cloud solutions that is very different from on-premise solutions. You would not use the same selection criteria to decide if you wanted to buy a house or rent one. Have the right mindset before choosing or rejecting Cloud.

Cloud is the answer, but make sure it is for the right reasons and you ask the right questions?

Disclaimer. I work for SAP; this posting expresses my personal opinion and does not represent SAP information, positions, strategy or opinion.