According to a Gartner study, 51 percent of IT spending is shifting to the public cloud, replacing traditional, on-premise solutions for application, operations, software development, and system infrastructure. For the customer, successful cloud migration results in a smooth, continuous transition of all the services and functions they know and need while ensuring those services stay accessible and optimized at all times from anywhere on the globe. For organizations, pulling off that seamless transition takes a tactical effort that, once maximized, results in sustained business growth.

The global cloud migration service market size was valued at $10.8 billion USD in 2021. It is expected to reach $68.2 billion USD by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.68 percent during the forecast period (2022–2030). This growth has transformed the way organizations conduct business. Cloud migration is driven by globalization, remote interconnectivity, increased data collection and analysis, sustainability, artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, and cloud computing. Most respondents (88 percent) to Deloitte’s US Future of Cloud Survey agreed that the cloud acts as a cornerstone in their digital strategy, believing it is vital to driving revenue and maintaining a strong position in the market. In an age of rapid and ongoing digital transformation, the trend of cloud migration is not merely a buzzword; it’s a strategic imperative for businesses striving to stay relevant and resilient.

The cloud is the center of digital transformation

As cloud migration continues to drive digital transformation, the impacts reach beyond technology and present an opportunity for organizations to proactively prepare for business growth. Using cloud architecture, companies can scale operations and instigate business growth by quickly and strategically addressing customer desires and new market innovations. Cloud solutions can simultaneously allow organizations to address needs while offering the opportunity to scale and transform effectively to meet constantly evolving technologies and markets. Organizations that transition to a cloud-based architecture can implement a strategy that accounts for the endless evolution of technology and business.

Nine ways to drive organizational success through cloud migration

Cloud migration isn’t unique to a specific industry or technology. Any growing organization in today’s marketplace can achieve these key benefits from cloud adoption, helping them to thrive in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

  1. Cost savings and efficiency are among the top benefits driving cloud migration today. Traditional, on-premises infrastructure is capital-intensive, and costs only rise as the business grows. With cloud computing services such as platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), organizations only pay for exactly what they need, on a per-use basis, typically by the hour, week, or month. This ensures optimized resource allocation while eliminating the need for physical storage and maintenance.
  2. Scalability and flexibility go hand-in-hand with cost savings and efficiency. The cost of scaling on-premises infrastructure stacks up quickly. On the other hand, cloud infrastructure is built to grow, change, adapt, and reallocate resources to suit customer needs and overall business objectives. This is especially essential to meet the demands of business complexity as global interconnectivity and technology innovations grow. For example, UPS, which balances many complex logistics including aviation, supply chain, packaging, e-commerce, and others, expanded its deal with Google Cloud in 2022 to address a surge in data. This cloud expansion can meet the specific needs of each of these departments with dedicated data centers.
  3. Agile application and product development lead to improved speed to market within a cloud environment. Agile development methodologies break down a development project into smaller, iterative projects to enable continuous feedback and improvement within the development stage rather than after the product launch. The cloud allows teams to maintain ongoing real-time communication about development iterations, quickening the development cycle. For example, when Spotify moved from on-premises to the cloud in 2015, it took two years to make that change without disrupting current operations. Upon completion, Spotify’s application capabilities grew to store improved personalization and recommendation algorithms, more content discovery features, and guaranteed uninterrupted music services, resulting in increased customer satisfaction.
  4. Improved collaboration and remote work between internal and external teams became strategic imperatives during and following the pandemic, changing how business is conducted. Many organizations seek to scale their collaborative and remote work technologies to new heights. Cloud migration is vital in helping geographically diverse teams effectively communicate and collaborate as if in the office. Today, organizations that adopt cloud-based collaboration tools experience considerable improvements to their team collaboration, with a study by Deloitte showing that 85 percent of organizations stated cloud investment is driving positive outcomes for creating improved operational processes or workflows. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successfully migrated its massive data archives and scientific research systems to the cloud. The primary outcome of this migration was to increase accessibility to its cross-functional teams and enhance collaboration between scientists working on different goals and assignments.
  5. Enhanced security and compliance are growing within all industries as cyber threats evolve. Organizations lacking cloud infrastructure risk falling behind with continuously fluctuating global and domestic regulations, industry standards, and evolving threats. Cloud migration enables improved security and auditability related to compliance by permitting easy and frequent maintenance. Application programming interfaces (APIs) and automation ensure economies of scale and flexibility, improving an organization’s ability to manage identities, control access, detect and mitigate threats early, and ensure regulatory compliance. Cloud service providers are on top of their sector’s trends and regulatory needs, allowing organizations to benefit from their industry-specific compliance expertise. Deloitte’s results showed that mitigating business and regulatory risk was among the top strategic business outcomes of cloud migration efforts.
  6. Business continuity and disaster recovery are essential for organizations and their customers to continuously receive necessary services and processes. Especially in today’s fast-paced, technology-driven marketplace, customers have high expectations for the speed and accessibility of the services they use. Consider banking and payment processing applications that must be ready to maintain business continuity for customers or vital, secure data storage for both internal and external operations. Cloud platforms offer robust disaster recovery solutions, regardless of unforeseen events. For example, when Accenture’s corporate and customer data was stolen through ransomware in 2021, its cloud infrastructure let the business fully restore all systems through backups without impacting operations or client systems. Cloud providers are built on core business continuity efforts such as data replication, automated backups, and geographic redundancy to minimize or eliminate the impact of disruptions.
  7. Innovation delivers a competitive edge for organizations that isn’t a bonus but rather an ongoing requirement. Cloud infrastructure allows organizations to experiment freely with new opportunities, test new solutions, or create low-cost iterations. With scalable resources and a wide range of customizable microservices, businesses can explore emerging technologies without risk, tailoring them to their specific needs and fostering an organizational culture of innovation. For instance, when Capital One transitioned its critical banking services and applications to the cloud, this led to a cultural transformation among developers, moving teams from a more traditional software development approach to an innovative DevOps culture that can better respond and adapt to evolving customer needs.
  8. Global reach and improved accessibility have become business imperatives in today’s increasingly globalized and interconnected world. If customers use a service in one part of the world, they expect the same, continuous service no matter where they travel or who they do business with. This is true of essential needs such as the supply chain, internet service, telecommunications, access to finances, and payment processing, but customers’ expectations for consistent services across every industry are only growing. Streaming services, for instance, are expected to have a consistent global reach that also meets the customer demands and compliance standards of certain countries, including languages, accessibility, performance, and security. Netflix is a prime example of how the cloud can enable a flexible, global approach that adapts to different populations’ needs and interests, as it is currently available in over 190 counties. Cloud infrastructure enables organizations to deploy their applications worldwide, reaching a more comprehensive, diverse market while ensuring user accessibility from any location.
  9. Customer experience and satisfaction are a direct result of each of these significant, interconnected benefits coming together for the company’s lifeblood: its end users. It is imperative that cloud infrastructure has no visible impact on customers. Rather, its success is in its silence. Cloud-based applications provide a seamless and responsive user experience that enables users to accomplish their tasks simply and effortlessly. For customers, improved reliability, faster response times, and access to innovative features can foster a positive customer experience that keeps them returning again and again.

Leadership and cloud talent alignment is essential

Cloud technologists are not the only individuals responsible for effective cloud migration. Proactive leadership is pivotal in directing cloud migration and digital transformation initiatives, ultimately driving organizational success. Meanwhile, a significant gap exists between cloud innovation success and leadership’s strategic priority level. A 2024 study by Deloitte found that “increasing efficiency and agility” was the top strategic priority for cloud investments at 89 percent. Yet only 65 percent of respondents agree that their organizations have successfully driven these outcomes. This means many cloud decision-makers are misaligning their cloud strategies with the areas that require the most innovation or lack the ability to innovate in their priority areas. Much of this misalignment can be solved by bringing cloud technology teams closer to organizational decision-makers to communicate benefits, invest in the right talent, align goals, and create an achievable cloud-based digital transformation plan. Leadership that remains communicative and transparent about resources, capabilities, and goals can significantly strengthen teams.

It’s essential to invest in technology experts who can commit to the careful planning and design of interfaces that ensure seamless communication mechanisms between components. For example, that success is currently hinged on necessities such as modularity and maintainability, standardized protocols with well-defined APIs that ensure coordination and consistency, loose coupling, high cohesion, and versioning strategies for debugging or when interfaces or APIs change. As technologies inevitably innovate and adapt over time, so will these requirements. Meeting these demands today and into the future means acquiring and developing the talent for effective cloud management, internally or through outsourced partners. This includes cloud architects, engineers, and administrators who understand the intricacies and best practices of cloud technologies, especially in areas where the cloud is increasingly empowering digital transformation, including customer-facing applications that focus on customer engagement and segmentation, core operations such as the supply chain, internal communications, and financial interactions. There’s no one-size-fits-all cloud solution for each of these vital sectors. With the right cloud experts in place, an organization is armed with the required talent who can train existing staff to utilize cloud tools and maximize their business impact effectively.

Building a foundation for sustained success

The shift to the cloud is more than a technological upgrade—it represents a strategic imperative for enterprises operating in a dynamic and interconnected marketplace. A robust cloud infrastructure creates a foundation for continuous innovation, enabling organizations to experiment with emerging technologies and expand their global presence. The true measure of cloud success is the successful delivery of exceptional customer experiences and improved satisfaction through reliable, responsive services. Navigating this journey demands proactive leadership and investment in skilled talent. When organizations bridge the gap between cloud innovation and strategic priorities, they foster collaboration between technology teams and decision-makers, a vital component to harnessing the full potential of cloud technologies. By embracing the cloud as a strategic enabler of growth and resilience, businesses can chart a course toward sustained success.

About the Author:

Venkata Manoj Kumar Adapa is an Oracle-certified cloud infrastructure information technology manager with over 13 years of experience as database architect and Oracle Apps DBA and more than 12 years of experience in Linux server administration. Manoj has extensive experience in Oracle cloud infrastructure (OCI) in IaaS, PaaS, DBCS, ExaCS and ExaC@C for designing and configuring for migrations and has also handled security using KMS, WAF and Cloud Guard, identity and access management using IDCS (Identity Cloud Service) in OCI. Manoj holds a bachelor’s degree in information technology from the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Technology, India.

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