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Dear readers, welcome to the 5th and last part of our series "Five (and More) Good Reasons for the Cloud"! You may have joined us last week for the "Atlassian Cloud Mythbusting", or you may have just taken a peek this week to find out which sound arguments there really are for the cloud. We have thrown the factors of easy scaling, long-term cost savings and competitiveness, speed and better performance and increased productivity (LINK) into the ring. Finally, we'll talk about a theme that ultimately runs through them all: Future-proofing. Because yes, there is no way around the cloud - but many roads lead to the cloud. We will be happy to accompany you on this journey. But first, we hope you enjoy reading the last part of our great cloud article series!
Good reason #5: long-term security for your company
Just 10 years ago, it was an "insider tip" to move to the cloud - today it is different, namely it simply makes strategic sense. Studies such as the highly regarded "Benchmark Your Enterprise Cloud Adoption Report" from Forrester, but also practical experience, confirm this. For example, 90% of Atlassian customers today choose a cloud solution rather than an on-premise scenario. Those moving to the cloud want to remain competitive and be able to offer highly available services to their customers and employees. 74% of organizations believe the cloud gives them a competitive advantage, and over 80% of enterprise workloads reside in the cloud. So what about your business?
One thing is certain: moving to the cloud can future-proof your teams. Let's take a closer look at a few aspects of this:
Always up to date - be competitive
In the cloud, all employees have direct access to the latest features, the latest security upgrades, and the most updated bug-free version. If you keep your software and processing power on-prem, a manual upgrade is required every time updates come in (typically two to four times a year). This costs your IT team time and money, downtime has to be scheduled, late and night shifts, and when something goes wrong, it has a negative impact on the entire business. There are also the less obvious costs associated with this: with updates that only happen a few times a year, lots of new features pop up all at once. For your teams, that means a very steep learning curve after each update - something that can be stressful in the long run. Not to mention that with a lot of new features comes the increased likelihood of getting one or two new bugs "on board" which then won't be fixed until the next update at the earliest (in the worst case, after around 6 months).
This is the great strength of the cloud: the releases come at shorter, regular intervals, are therefore smaller and can sometimes only include a product improvement that only some customers need, and if something goes wrong, changes can be easily rolled back and the impact is limited. Most importantly, you don't have to wait months for a bug fix, you get it as soon as it's ready. In addition, it has been proven that a few new features are easier to "digest" than large portions, and the latest developments are available right away. All in all, a winning combination that makes you competitive!
Creativity and strategy first in the cloud
When you host software and systems yourself, some members of your IT team have a huge workload: Just scaling up to provide more storage or processing power to more users can take days, weeks, or even months. Updates and security patches need to be managed, scheduled and executed. And in the event of major incidents or even outages, it's up to your team to straighten it out - regardless of the time of day or whether anyone is on vacation.
By moving to the cloud, you can outsource most of these "time suckers" to the cloud provider. Instead of installing new servers or spending time troubleshooting problems, your IT staff can work on strategic and creative tasks that are important and unique to your business. And they can respond more quickly to other requests, which makes their coworkers happier. With that in mind, most IT teams are already overloaded - a study by Zendesk found that internal support teams receive about 500 requests per month, and it takes more than 24 hours to respond to each one. So you can prevent overload by migrating to the cloud - giving your IT professionals another reason to stay.
Continuous releases - more security
48% of developers say that they don't have time for important security issues. So when you are depending on your internal teams, security patches will probably take longer to implement than you'd like. With the right cloud provider, that won't be a problem anymore, because security is their top priority, and patches are rolled out as soon as they're available.
The cloud helps non-technical teams get up to speed
With on-premise systems, every change, whether it's a security update, a new feature, or more processing power, has to go through the IT team. Not only does this put a burden on the technical team, but it also slows down the work of your non-technical teams who have to wait for their issues to be fixed.
With the cloud, teams can move much faster and more flexibly thanks to features like auto-scaling, instant security, and feature updates. They can make changes to processes themselves and take advantage of new features that improve their workflows without having to go through lengthy approval processes or bombarding the IT team.
In agile organizations that emphasize ownership, this triggers a kind of domino effect: Teams are empowered by the cloud to do their best work, and in the process they enjoy autonomy, job satisfaction, a sense of loyalty to the company, and the confidence to strive for ambitious goals and find creative solutions. As the Harvard Business Review stated after its own comprehensive study on the subject:
"Empowered employees are more likely to be powerful, confident individuals who are committed to meaningful goals and demonstrate initiative and creativity to achieve them. They typically have the freedom to generate novel ideas and the confidence that these ideas will be valued."
The cloud simplifies remote work and the collaboration of distributed teams
In 2021, around 4.7 million people worked remotely in the U.S., 95% of office workers wanted to work remotely, and 66% believed offices will be obsolete by 2030. The pandemic in particular has shown that being able to work remotely can be critical, and the trend toward telecommuting continues to grow.
For companies that still rely entirely on on-premise solutions, this can get complicated. Of course, on-prem installations can be accessed remotely, but security issues must be considered. And then it gets complex: because you need passwords, firewalls, VPN barriers, and architectural constraints, achieving smooth remote work often seems to require a degree in rocket science.
With a cloud solution, you need nothing more than an Internet connection. Cloud security is already designed with remote working in mind (which is probably why 94% of companies surveyed said security improved for them after moving to the cloud). This allows your employees to work constructively in distributed teams around the globe - As a side benefit, it also gives you access to talent you might never have discovered otherwise. For example they might be e highly location-bound due to a care condition or disability and therefore have to work from home.
Five (and more) reasons you should be moving to the cloud
At the beginning of the week, we gave you five reasons why moving to the cloud can be worthwhile. You can increase profits and save costs (and your IT team's valuable time), you can scale easily and flexibly , your IT services will be faster and performance will improve, your employees' productivity will get a boost (article 4) and your company will be future-proofed and remain competitive. All in all, these are good arguments.
If one or even all of these aspects are important to you, it's time to start thinking about the cloud - and perhaps even to start working on a plan or strategy. But you don't have to do it alone: As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, we at Seibert Media have the experience and know-how to guide you step by step in your move to the cloud. Together, we will assess your starting position and find the best way for you to migrate smoothly to the cloud. Just get in touch with us!
That's it for our blog article series "Five (and More) Good Reasons for the Cloud"! We hope we were able to show you one or two factors that you may not have known before. If you'd like, give us some feedback, we would really appreciate it.
Next week, we will continue to deal with the cloud, but then rather with products and services. Feel free to check back, we look forward to seeing you!