Simplification of data architectures overcomes the skills shortages exposed by cloud migration

Cloud migration has taken off during the pandemic providing many organizations with gains in agility but exposing a significant lack of skillsets when it comes to integrating data to supercharge business value.

The upward trend in cloud usage started almost immediately after the spread of Covid. In the early days of the outbreak in April last year, it was Microsoft who trumpeted at an earnings call that they had seen two years of digital transformation in the space of two months – an early indication of what was to come across industries. 

In the public cloud, the upward trend in adoption is set to continue. Gartner, for example, predicts worldwide spending on public cloud by end-users will increase by 18 percent this year, hitting $305 billion in total. Next year the consultancy predicts the figure will be $362 billion. 

What has happened during the last 15 months is that three trends have combined with high valency. The first is enforced remote working and the second is the need for more effective collaboration and any-time access to data and analytics. The third trend is the growth in number and quality of SaaS applications. This potent combination has made the flexibility of public cloud very attractive to many organizations looking for solutions to overcome short-term challenges and provide longer-term agility. 

Admittedly, cost has remained an important consideration in public cloud migration, enabling organizations to match resources to demand more easily than on-premises, with more flexible pricing and storage options. When working with big data it is possible to achieve major economies of scale without being tied into excessively rigid contracts. Once an organization has achieved a specific project it can scale back its requirements and reduce its costs. 

However, the chief motivation for this rapid expansion into the public cloud is primarily about opening the door to new eco-systems of applications based on a common infrastructure and resources. The three main cloud vendors have created a broad range of services that organizations view as a platform for the development of applications across their whole enterprise. Rather than different business units working separately on their own data strategies, they come together, bridging gaps that would otherwise open up.

This is important because the pressures of Covid exposed gaps in the data of many organizations struggling to function remotely. The private data center brings with it many challenges when organizations suddenly need access to services over the internet. The businesses that overcame these challenges were those able to carry on serving customers without problem. 

Containerisation technology, which packages software code and its dependencies so it runs on any infrastructure, has also accelerated cloud migration. Customer relationship management, resource-planning and sales applications have all been moving into the cloud. Oil and gas and major logistics companies already use public cloud computing and storage capabilities, and banks employ its flexibility and scale for mobile applications. Process automation, the continuance of remote or hybrid models of working by major enterprises along with the increased use of collaboration apps and services such as SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) will all further hasten migration to the cloud. 

The cloud is also able to meet the increased appetite for artificial intelligence and machine learning (ML) enabled services, but on a managed services basis to optimize flexibility, cost-management and provide rapid access to the most effective solutions as they prove their worth.