There is no question that data will exist in the cloud. Our research shows that nearly one-quarter (24%) of organizations have the majority of their data in the cloud and 86 percent expect that the majority of their data will be in the cloud in the future. So if you are going to be a data-driven organization it’s natural that analytics will exist where the data lives since proximity to the data helps boost performance. Nearly all the participants in our research (99%) expect that they will be performing analytics in the cloud and approximately half (48%) are already doing so. Even if your organization is bound by certain regulations or internal policies that prevent the use of public clouds, you will want to consider private cloud architectures that deliver agility and flexibility to the lines of business for their analytic processes.
The best way to gain support for the deployment of emerging technologies is by demonstrating to the lines of business the benefits they’ll realize. Participants in our research indicate that AI and machine learning have enabled their organizations to gain a competitive advantage, improve customer experiences and increase sales, among other benefits. As one part of your organization experiences these successes, you can promote their success to help drive additional adoption of new technologies.
Many organizations have digital transformation initiatives, but we urge organizations to consider more than just transformation of existing processes. The cloud enables new and innovative ways of doing things. For example, consider the Internet of Things (IoT). The IoT devices that organizations deploy typically are distributed widely. The cloud provides a ready-made wide area network to collect and process the event data generated by these devices. Effectively, the cloud allows organizations to expand their networks beyond the four walls of their buildings. It is possible these benefits could be achieved without the cloud, but it would likely require much more investment and have a lower return on that investment.
Often organizations point to cost savings as the justification for technology investments. And certainly, the cloud offers the opportunity to embrace new technologies with significantly less capital investment. While cost savings and reduced capital spending can be significant, we believe focusing solely on these factors is short-sighted. Our research has shown that cloud-based analytics improved efficiency in business processes, increased workforce productivity and enabled participants in our research to respond faster to opportunities and threats. Going back to the theme of innovation, the reduced capital investment enabled by the cloud allows organizations to experiment and explore innovative ways of doing business much more easily. Even if those processes are eventually implemented on-premises, the cloud makes it feasible to experiment and innovate much more rapidly and cost effectively.
Fundamentally, a move to the cloud is about improving the time-to-value and agility of an organization. The cloud is also about reducing line of business dependencies on IT, thus benefiting both organizations. When the line of business becomes more self-sufficient, IT resources are freed to focus on more strategic issues. Our research shows organizations that access and analyze data without relying on IT report higher satisfaction rates (72%) than those that are dependent on IT (54%).
The best practices start with focusing on the line of business operations and personnel. Too often, technology initiatives become IT-focused. Be vigilant. Make sure you are enabling improvements in specific business processes. We also suggest using the cloud to broaden the data sources you consider. Embrace additional data sources – especially external sources that weren’t accessible previously – to enrich your data for more accurate analyses. And, as pointed out above, think of ways to innovate instead of just re-platforming existing business processes.
The cloud is an accelerant for AI and other technologies such as IoT, and it also creates an imperative for these technologies. For example, AI can require very large amounts of computing resources which might be prohibitively expensive if they had to be purchased and installed on- premises. These resources can be rented at a fraction of the cost that would be needed to purchase them. Therefore, organizations can afford to apply these resources in large quantities on a temporary or intermittent basis to perform the very complex analytics required by AI. The cloud also accelerates adoption of these technologies by making them available as services that are more affordable and more easily accessible than if they had to be installed and managed on-premises.
The cloud creates an imperative for technologies such as AI and IoT by making huge volumes of data available for analysis. In fact, entire businesses have emerged for publishing large, detailed data sources that can be used to enhance AI-based analyses. Much of this information is collected in the cloud as well as being distributed in the cloud. And, as our research shows, organizations are collecting and processing their IoT event data via the cloud. You can also think of the cloud as equalizing access to AI and other new technologies for both large and small organizations.