How Can We Be Of Service?
Trends, such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big data and mobile apps, are changing the way many CIOs think about enterprise applications. A recent survey conducted by SAP showed that 92% of organisations have seen their data grow over the last 12 months, and this has created challenges for some IT infrastructures.
But whilst vast quantities of information can be a problem, it’s also an opportunity. Rather than drowning in data we must seek innovative ways to manage it, like the ‘as-a-service’ subscription-based models. In recent years their popularity has increased dramatically and almost every aspect of business now has an associated software you can access online.
According to research from IDC, by 2018 more than 60% of enterprises will have at least half their infrastructure on cloud-based platforms: either infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or software-as-a-service (SaaS). So why are organisations seeing the cloud as having strategic importance?
Cloud offers numerous benefits to organisations, such as:
- Faster implementations and set up requirements
- Higher performance and efficiency
- Cost savings and no license fees
- Hassel free upgrades and updates
- Scalable environments
- Easy, secure data storage
- The ability to access information, from anywhere at any time on any device
The rising popularity of ‘as-a-service’
The rise of ‘as-a-service’ has only been made possible through advances in technology, such as IBM Power, which is giving everyone the opportunity to innovate and drive their business forward. With the ability to process enterprise data sets at speeds that haven’t been seen before – 5 to 10 times faster than today’s supercomputers – IBM Power is changing the storage landscape by:
- Improving interoperability through the integration of new and existing products.
- Enabling radical innovation of products, markets, and workloads.
- Providing you with greater choice and increased flexibility.
So what does this mean for the future?
As the popularity of cloud continues to grow, and new technological developments are made, anything is possible. But this will have a noticeable effect on our IT infrastructures, and our IT departments.
By outsourcing our operations to the cloud, it means there will be less need for on-premise solutions, and therefore less requirement for daily monitoring and maintenance of these systems. In turn it means that rather than spending most of the time trying to ‘keep the lights on’, IT teams can now take a more strategic role in the organisation, seeking to find new innovative ways of enabling the business to meet its objectives.