Why we all should think cloud-first

An integral part of my onboarding at Microsoft is learning all about our data centers in Switzerland that went live almost two years ago. This is an exciting way to gain additional insights on how we fulfill a great need of organizations. In this context, I came across a number in a study conducted by our partner Swisscom: 50 percent of Swiss companies have to rely on cloud services from local data centers due to regulatory or legal reasons. In comparison to other European countries, this number strikes me as high, but this percentage also reflects Switzerland’s unique economical structure with regulated industries and a strong public sector.

Therefore, it is no surprise that there is an increasing demand for our local cloud services. Just this Thursday, we continued to expand the offer in our Swiss data centers. I think it’s fair to say that Azure has become the standard cloud platform for many Swiss organizations in both commercial and public sectors. It is great to see so many organizations in Switzerland embrace the cloud – not because they must, but because they see a clear added value in increasing their own security and privacy. As I already outlined last week, trust is the foundation of this journey. No one will use technology they don’t trust.

Another reason for moving to the cloud – I consider exciting from a business perspective – is the access to services that empower our customers to innovate. We clearly see that when we look at cloud usage in Switzerland: More and more customers across all industries and of all sizes are using Artificial Intelligence to create customer centric solutions or even venture into new markets. The ability to store data locally and at the same time have access to these services is the advantage of working with a hyperscale cloud provider like Microsoft. If you think about the future and quantum computing, this advantage will grow exponentially bigger...

In the first two weeks, I especially enjoyed the discussions with my new colleagues about our customers and partners. I am impressed by all the innovation based on cloud technology and data and AI our customers and partners in Switzerland are already driving. However, there is still a lot of potential to be harnessed, especially for organizations that have not yet started their journey to the cloud. I can only encourage these organizations from my own experience to open a #NewChapter by thinking cloud-first.