Wednesday 22 November 2017

Are you making the most of cloud for your digital transformation?




The key to capitalizing on cloud is to stop talking tech and demonstrate the business value for your organization.

People adopt cloud for reasons like efficiency and velocity, but they need to focus on the capability it can bring to your organization. It has features and functions that the organization may not have on premise and would otherwise take a significant investment to achieve.

Cloud is the hottest technology trend. However, cloud computing services related to the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence rated lower in terms of the perceived return on investment.
IT Teams should develop a matrix showing how cloud services could be used to benefit the business. As well, a non-technical storyboard on how technology could improve a ‘day-in-the life’ of the company can show concrete benefits to business leaders.

Here is a practice that has seen massive success in Cloud Computing. The Azure cloud services deliver business value.

Simplify backup & disaster recovery
Traditional backup solutions are resource intensive and complex so it means that important data that should be backed up may not actually be backed up.

With Azure Backup, the infrastructure and management is handled by Microsoft. All the company has to do is set up its backup policies. Backup servers can be deployed on-site or in the cloud to support hybrid or on-premises environments. Similarly, if an organization has an existing backup solution, it can continue to leverage that investment by using the Azure Vault for storage to take advantage of the flexibility and cost savings of cloud.

To protect against disasters, Azure Site Recovery automatically replicates an organization’s virtual machines. If disaster strikes, services can be quickly restored according to a predetermined plan. Organizations only pay for the storage, a license per protected workload and compute time used during the disaster. From a business perspective, “it allows for huge cost savings for disaster recovery because you no longer have to run another hot data centre.” It also makes disaster recovery more feasible for smaller businesses that otherwise might not have that capability.

Automate your infrastructure
Over time, there is often some tinkering with the settings on infrastructure components like virtual machines and load balancers, resulting in configuration drift. When the configuration of every component becomes unique, it’s more time consuming to manage and more likely to cause errors.

The answer is infrastructure as code. It uses stored definition files or templates to automatically provision and manage the infrastructure. It protects against misconfiguration or tinkering by monitoring the settings with alerts about changes, and can even revert things back to the original state. It’s more predictable and avoids manual errors.

It sounds technical but it can have a big impact on business transformation. By giving an organization the ability to automatically spin up services in a reliable and consistent way, they can respond faster to customer needs.


IoT Platform Market To Grow in the Coming Years.


The global Internet of Things (ToT) platform market is moderately competitive. With a handful number of players, the market is still said to be in its nascent stage. Analysts anticipate that the competition is likely to intensity in the coming years due to increasing investment in research and development and introduction of intellectual property such as patents. Some of the leading players in the global market are Microsoft Corporation, Google Inc., PTC Inc., and IBM Corporation.

Demand for Better Connectivity Opens Up Tremendous Opportunities for Global IoT Platform Market
The growing demand for internet and seamless connectivity has been driving the global IoT platform market in recent years. The market’s growth has also been supported by the improved connection speed over the last few years. Today, IoT platforms have become an integral part of the industrial as well as domestic setups. Improved accessibility to information and actions through cloud has accelerated the uptake of IoT platform over the years. The biggest advantage of cloud is that data can be accessed from anywhere and at any time.

 Furthermore, the fact that it requires minimal investment is likely to propel market’s growth in the coming years. The decreasing cost of internet has made it affordable to many. This trend has especially supported the rise of the global IoT platform market.

The growing penetration of mobile phones and various other PDAs have also made a fair contribution to the soaring revenue of the global IoT platform market. These devices have enabled greater flexibility while controlling other devices on the IoT platform. Features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and infrared have enabled an inherent connectivity for smartphones and other PDAs. Owing to these reasons, IoT platforms have been able to penetrate at a rapid rate in recent years. The terrific advancement in production of IoT sensors, their increasing affordability, and their optimum size are also expected to support market growth in the coming years.

Threat of Cyber-attacks Dampens Market Spirit
Despite the advantage of using IoT platform, the global market continues to face certain challenges such as the high possibility of losing data to cyber-attack. The growing concerns about software, network, or encryption are expected to restrain the growth of the overall market in the coming years. The lack of awareness about IoT platforms, especially in the developing regions, is also expected to dampen the spirit of the market in the near future.

The IoT Platform market has been segmented as below:

The IoT Platform Market, By Deployment
  • On-Premise
  • Cloud

The IoT Platform Market, By Application
  • Inventory Management
  • Human Capital Management
  • Customer Service
  • Enterprise Performance Management
  • Supply Chain Management
  • Infrastructure Management
  • Other (Security, Asset Performance Management)

The IoT Platform by Industry
  • Retail
  • Healthcare
  • BFSI
  • Oil and Gas
  • Transportation and Logistics
  • Manufacturing
  • Government and Defense
  • Energy
  • Other (Education, Hospitality)



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