The right approach Chaitanya Rajebahadur shares his advice on futureproofing your cloud
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anufacturers’ cloud infrastructures can be difficult to set up. Developing and implementing the strategy takes time, investment, clear objectives – financial as well as operational – and most importantly having everybody onboard with that strategy. This article will discuss how to create a futureproof cloud strategy. The Covid-19 pandemic effectively rubber-stamped the advantages of using cloud infrastructures to do more than just ‘keep the lights on’, moving enterprises from a reactive footing to a more proactive one. Cloud strategies themselves have evolved rapidly over the past two years, with the need to keep the production lines moving whilst leaving room for innovation. An example of this was gin producers quickly turning to the problem of viral transmission by rejigging their production lines to produce alcohol-based hand sanitizer. New manufacturers are likely to adopt a cloud strategy right away, but large enterprises are mainly using private cloud blended with more traditional public clouds to create a hybrid that smaller enterprises may need to consider in 2022 and beyond.
What cloud options have manufacturers adopted since the pandemic?
During the pandemic, Statista’s 2020 research shows that 32 percent of manufacturing enterprises with over ten employees bought high (accounting, CRM, and compute power) cloud computing services, compared to 18 percent in 2019, that’s almost double. Therefore, it’s not surprising that enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services
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equaled that of data center hardware and software in 2019, and was about a third higher in 2020, according to market intelligence firm Synergy Research Group. Post-pandemic, a window of opportunity has opened up to move some critical workloads to the cloud for the immediate benefits it offers. This will help build elasticity into production management and enable manufacturers to meet the strain of future demand. However, not every workload will benefit from such a move. Some workloads will need hosting on a private cloud, to give an extra level of security for certain applications and data – the enterprise’s ‘crown jewels’ – intellectual property for instance, or data subject to compliance regulations.
Migrating enterprises into the cloud and the potential pain points
The success rate for large enterprises being able to migrate to cloud-based infrastructures is 30 percent. But how is success defined? Well, you could look at the speed of the transformation, the scale or the downtime incurred during the migration, but ultimately tangible business results has to be the chief argument. The immediate benefits for enterprises migrating to cloud services of whatever type are, cost savings, improved performance, and simplifying IT overall. Manufacturers, in particular, may benefit from the ability for remote maintenance to be carried out more easily with applications powered by the cloud. Businesses of this type will also have a digital foundation allowing them to scale production more easily based on customer demand, which can help drive innovation.