Cloud Migration is a process in which you move your digital assets from your own computers or servers to the cloud. It usually involves applications and data.
COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, and other restrictions increased the demand for Cloud Migration. The trend of working from anywhere has been especially important. According to Deloitte, the cloud migration market growth was bigger in 2020 than it had been in 2019. Even despite, or maybe thanks to the pandemic.
Cloud Migration Statistics – Pandemic Trends
I would venture to say that most of the statistics show constant growth of the demand on Cloud Migration. I’ll get to the benefits of such a solution later in this article, but let’s just say that you’d rather want to be at the forefront, than holding back.
According to the Mordor Intelligence report, the cloud migration market will grow from $120 billion in 2020 to $450 billion in 2026, due to the increased demand. Microsoft has already stated that they’ve witnessed an almost 8-time increase in demand for their cloud services, and 87% of businesses in the U.S. want to accelerate cloud migrations after the COVID-19 pandemic.
CIOs recognized this trend and almost 70% of them claim that migration to a cloud (public or private) was the top spending driver in their companies throughout 2020 (compared to about 50% a previous year). 87% of IT decision-makers worldwide stated that the pandemic is a game-changer and that organizations need to accelerate their cloud migration processes. A vast majority of them also believe that by 2035 95% of workloads will run in a cloud.
One of the factors that had the most influence on cloud migration was the Work From Anywhere trend. Lockdowns forced many companies to introduce various home-office solutions. According to SHRM, we’ve witnessed tremendous growth in the number of people working remotely. From 3% of full-time employees in January 2020 to 64% three months later, in April 2020. This trend continued during the following months.
Companies that weren’t remote-ready faced technological obstacles using on-premise data centres. Such solutions require employees to have access to their workplace. As workers’ protection is one of the key responsibilities in 2021, the demand for cloud-based solutions will grow.
This rapid growth in cloud migrations has yet another outcome. It’s getting harder to find and hire reliable specialists, who could support the migration in your company. How big change has happened? According to Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, “we’ve seen two years of digital transformation in two months”.
How Companies Use Cloud Computing?
There are multiple ways to use cloud infrastructure for your business. From always accessible data storage, to applications and shared workspaces, to cloud-based web applications provided to your customers, to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for business purposes.
Today, companies are likely to combine the use of public and private clouds. Such a combination, called hybrid cloud, is known as a flexible, yet secure solution for most businesses.
Even banks use hybrid clouds to remain competitive when fin-tech startups gain their shares in the market. Cloud infrastructure helps banks utilize top-notch technologies like AI or blockchain to provide their customers with user-friendly and customer-centric solutions. Financial institutions have even used clouds to provide small businesses with more accessible financing during the crisis.
Clouds are also very efficient when it comes to remote working or mixing office work and work from home approach. There’s a big number of companies that only now have realized that their employees can work from home (or work from anywhere) keeping the same effectiveness and lowering companies’ fixed costs. Cloud migration can help them do it even better. Although on-premise infrastructure can lead you to a similar outcome, it will bring much higher costs and require a lot more workforce to do so.
There’s also a whole realm for the use of AI in clouds. Commercial applications include predicting customer demands for various goods, and this is something any retailer would die for.
Moreover, cloud computing and AI can be used to better allocate resources improving cost optimization, project management, and HR processes.
How Cloud Provides Competitive Advantage For Your Business?
Widely discussed remote work and its advantages is only one of many perks of cloud-based solutions. There are at least a few more reasons for migration:
- increased effectiveness,
- quicker change implementation,
- security,
- scalability,
- mobility, and
- disaster recovery
An American clothing company, Brooks Brothers, reported their productivity grew by 50% only because of cloud migration.
Over the years, we’ve seen the growth of the XaaS market (Anything as a Service). Next new companies either transform their business models or enter new niches with scalable services based on Clouds.
Furthermore, improving your current business isn’t the end. Cloud computing opens a whole new space of opportunities to create innovative products and services to offer your customers.
Why Migrating To the Cloud? Migration to a cloud makes your business more crisis resistant, more flexible, and gives you more opportunities to meet and exceed customers’ needs. It also makes your company a better place to work at.
You’d say that there are no drawbacks of cloud migration.
Cloud Migration Services Market – Where To Find Specialists?
The one problem with cloud migration is that it’s easy to do it wrong. Discovering all the processes in the company and deciding which should be migrated is only one of the challenges. An Inexperienced person can easily get lost on the web of conflicting goals, change resistance, and additional expenses.
It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t consider cloud migration for your company. All you need is a trusted partner. Especially given that many companies have already gone through that process and their advantage grows with each passing day.
Get a free consultation from Inspeerity experts. Let’s see if cloud migration can help you make better business, and how to get it done the best possible way.
