Enterprises See Benefits in Cloud Adoption |
A recent Deloitte Review article highlighted several business advantages over traditional forms of computing that can have a direct impact on how businesses operate:
- Broad network access: Services are accessible from a wide variety of devices (such as PCs, smartphones and tablets) and from any location with network access to the cloud.
- Resource pooling: Computing resources are pooled to serve multiple customers, which creates significant efficiencies and economies of scale. Resources are deployed based on demand, and customers generally don’t know (and don’t need to know) where those resources are physically located.
- Rapid elasticity: Computing capabilities in the cloud are essentially unlimited and can be quickly scaled up or down in response to an organization’s changing needs.
- On-demand self-service: New services and capacity can be provisioned quickly and easily, often without vendor employee involvement.
- Measured service: Businesses pay only for the cloud services and resources they actually use.
…and technical advantages too:
- Rapid implementation: Less time is required to get up and running on cloud-based systems.
- Cost predictability: Cloud’s pay-as-you-go model, which includes the cost of system upgrades, makes it easier to predict IT costs.
- Balanced ROI: Cloud delivers a faster return on IT investments, thanks to accelerated implementation and elimination of upfront licensing and infrastructure costs.
- Agility: Companies can quickly develop and deploy new IT capabilities and business processes to stay ahead of the competition and keep pace with changes in the marketplace.
- Scalability: Cloud provides a flexible platform that can grow or shrink as needed, enabling businesses to explore new markets, pursue new innovations and serve new customer segments.
And according to a new September 2012 research report, cloud applications can deliver 1.7 times more return on investment than on-premise ones. Although there are a variety of reasons why many are still hesitant to adopt, we think the biggest constraint to SaaS adoption in the large enterprise space is the capability gap between established enterprise applications and still-maturing SaaS applications. In some areas, such as CRM, the capability gap is already negligible – and in some cases may even favor SaaS. But in other areas, SaaS-based enterprise solutions still have a way to go.
Read more about cloud adoption across the enterprise here.
