Building a Cloud strategy can produce a series of efficiencies for many companies. Many of our customers have benefited already – some by commissioning a server cluster in order to begin project development whilst awaiting new hardware; some by creating backup and recovery environments; some by creating SharePoint sites that are responsive to the demands of flexible business requirements. In all cases, the flexibility of the available configurations means that it is possible to commission server power as it is needed rather than making a capital purchase that allows for future – thereby more closely aligning the costs with the benefits.
The Cloud is a valid choice for production environments too. We have customers who have their data warehouse environment built entirely in the Cloud with Business Intelligence suites providing information to all company stakeholders. For some customers, a hybrid configuration allows them to gain the maximum return on their current infrastructure; for others, their requirement to see key performance indicators on tablets and smartphones has driven their migration to the Cloud.
It is projected that by next year (2020), 24% of IT Application spend will be based on Cloud deployments and that by 2025, 80% of enterprise IT, will have moved to the Cloud, reflecting the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) nature of today’s office environment. Applications like Office 365 are key drivers of this direction of travel.