One of the more surprising impacts that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on business may be the increased adoption of cloud by many businesses since the outbreak began.
The migration of application workload and data to the cloud has long been under consideration by many businesses. However, concerns around privacy, regulatory requirements, performance, and connectivity have caused quite a few to delay any movement to the cloud.
But a global pandemic changes the way everyone sees the world. As CIO Dive said last week, “Under the coronavirus lens, the biggest shift was in the reasoning around cloud technologies — previously-held skepticism gave way to efficiency and an improved time to market.”
The same CIO Dive article went on to say, “The pandemic confirmed what many technology leaders already knew: the flexibility born from the cloud directly supports business transformation and adds to customer value. With results in hand, businesses will accelerate moving to the cloud.”
Obviously, for many companies the need to change operations to minimize risk to their employees, customers, and partners forced them to take the leap to the cloud. Or, as a writer for AnalyticsInsight.net phrased it, “as the pandemic is forcing offices around the world to close their doors and society has become a massive guinea pig in the largest work-from-home experiment the world has ever seen, the shift to cloud services has picked up the pace.”
DevOps.com was completely blunt about the reason for migrating to the cloud now.
“As the days tick by and the gloomy ramifications of COVID-19 become more apparent, one harsh truth has become crystal clear: Industries that have invested in digital transformation stand a better chance of recovery and survival than others.”
After listing businesses that have invested in cloud projects and managed to not only survive but also thrive, contrasted with those that have not adopted cloud, who are barely hanging on, the article notes that “the cloud has proven its ability to respond with speed while remaining robust.”
This global cloud proof of concept driven by the COVID-19 pandemic is, however, providing reasons for some optimism. DevOps.com believes that: “”COVID-19 is going to accelerate the cloud journey for scores of enterprises, and investments in the technology will quickly show their upsides—improved business resilience, cost control, and above all, the ability to keep the lights on.”
Cloud adoption’s ability to help businesses with keeping the lights on is another optimistic note highlighted in the AnalyticsInsight piece, stating that “The pandemic has created the necessity for organizations to reevaluate the way they approach IT and business applications. It has required organizations to show agility and adaptability as they learn to adopt cloud-based services just to keep the lights on.”
That article predicts that a complete shift to public cloud might happen in the next two or three years instead of the two decades that people had been forecasting. It will be interesting to see if that actually happens.
Our cloud team has been talking to organizations to help them assess their plans for migrating to the cloud since before the COVID-19 outbreak, and we continue to do so. If you’re thinking of accelerating your enterprise’s timeline for cloud adoption, fill out the form below to schedule a consultation.
We will help you keep the lights on.