Today, more than ever, companies need to operate and compete at an unprecedented speed and scale as industries are reshaping beneath them. This means innovating faster, creating new revenue streams, deriving more insights from data – and from the edge – and interacting differently with their customers, partners and employees. All of these changes are fundamental, interconnected and require a catalyst to drive them – and that is Cloud.
Are Luxembourgish businesses ready to adopt the cloud?
Migrating to the cloud has never been easier or faster. Nevertheless, Luxembourgish companies have always been more cautious than other geographies about its adoption. COVID-19 has changed this. The question is no longer “Shall we go to the cloud?”, but “How fast can we go to the cloud?”.
Luxembourg companies are recognizing the value of the cloud and are accelerating their cloud migration journey at full speed. By becoming “smart followers”, companies can benefit from many valuable lessons learned and industrialization techniques to achieve full cloud migration, quickly and at a reasonable cost.
Finding the right integrators and cloud service providers to partner with is essential. Whereas cloud migration is often perceived as complex and expensive, I have seen companies achieve “cash less” (or capex less) migrations, meaning that their migration to the cloud is self-financed by incremental savings and joint investments by integrators and cloud service providers.
By becoming ‘smart followers’, companies can benefit from many valuable lessons learned and industrialization techniques to achieve full cloud migration, quickly and at a reasonable cost.
What are the main benefits of adopting the cloud from a technology perspective?
There are many benefits attached to a cloud-based IT infrastructure. The top 3, which are particularly relevant to Luxembourg, are as follows:
1. Cloud helps to optimize costs through an “Elastic” infrastructure.
- With a cloud-based IT infrastructure, companies only consume what they need. For example, a dynamic reduction (even shutdown) of hardware at nighttime and during weekends and the possibility to increase server capacity during processing peaks (e.g., end of day batches, analytics calculations…).
- There is no need for unused “backup” data center capacity to handle server failures and or other outages. As such, companies can optimize their spending and reduce their overall carbon footprint.
- We have seen cost reductions of up to 60% when cloud migration is correctly combined with the right application modernization.
2. Cloud is an amazing platform for IT modernization and modern application development.
- Cloud is a fantastic “Lego box” where each brick has “plug and play” functionality. These bricks can be combined to modernize existing applications or build totally new applications.
- Services such as security, managed databases, API(s), and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence are ready to use, enabling developers to focus on creating business value rather than technology plumbing.
3. Time to market and efficiency.
- Today, IT engineers are becoming a rare and precious resource, which is definitely the case in Luxembourg.
- Cloud allows companies to use their existing human resources more efficiently and build more with less.
Beyond technology, what value can the cloud bring to businesses?
Every company is a technology company. The cloud provides access to amazing innovations, which all companies can use to develop their own digital capabilities. Modern data platforms such as “Data Lakehouse” (a combination of Data Lakes and Data Warehouses) are available “As-a-Service” requiring very little investment to immediately start using. These platforms make it possible to apply big data tools and techniques to completely re-imagine the way we process data and all of that in a real time, event driven, and potentially augmented with artificial intelligence. For example, Data Monetization, Recommendation Engines, Real Time Alerts, Business Intelligence and Fraud Detection can be implemented fast and efficiently.
Every company is a technology company. The cloud provides access to amazing innovations, which all companies can use to develop their own digital capabilities.
Developing cloud-based solutions is easier than what people think. It’s always best to experiment with pilots and proofs of concept to identify those that create real value for your company. And with the cloud, you can potentially use ALL the talent within your company. No-Code platforms in the cloud provide tools that allow any “tech” enthusiast employee to build their own applications without needing development skills. For example, employees can develop their own end-user apps and share them with colleagues. All this is done in a controlled and secured sandbox avoiding the “shadow IT risk”.
Another added value of the cloud is Business Agility in terms of ecosystems and partnerships. By combining your company’s services with those of others, you can develop new business models and generate new revenue streams. Building joint solutions with start-ups and FinTech, creating new partnerships across your own sector and even beyond it, is much easier in a cloud-based environment.