expressed opinion entrepreneur Contributors are themselves.
cloud stocks have some worst weeks ever In October, it even weighed on the broader tech market.This is followed by a Microsoft warning Significant slowdown in cloud business, also expects growth in its cloud computing platform Azure, one of the main engines of its business, to slow.This is partly due to the company is cutting Overall, or in the Microsoft CEO’s term, “optimize spending.”
At first glance, it might seem reasonable to defer certain infrastructure investments and stop migrating operations to the cloud. But this short-term thinking can cost the company in the long run.
The cloud offers too many obvious benefits to be ignored, even in the face of a technology downturn. Cloud computing enables organizations to scale, remain flexible and focus on business operations while freeing IT staff to worry about complex IT infrastructures. If AWS, Microsoft, or Salesforce is managing your infrastructure, you can bet their services include state-of-the-art everything and continuous infrastructure upgrades.
Companies no longer need to hire armies of specialists to run IT departments — which is good news, considering how rarely a strong IT department actually confers a competitive advantage.
Entrepreneurs who cannot keep up with the cloud will lose their agility in many ways. When the tech market recovers—whether in 2023 or 2024—they will blame themselves for their lack of agility.
Business expansion can be costly, both in terms of financial and human capital. But now with cloud technology, companies can scale on demand and stay up-to-date with best practices because cloud service providers employ the highest levels of security, compliance, and data protection standards.
They don’t have to act alone. Entrepreneurs who have seen the value of the cloud in recent years understand the challenges many companies face when migrating their entire business to the cloud. For example, GlobalDots helps companies scale globally by simplifying quality, regulation, compliance, and data management—all using tailored cloud and web solutions. DigitalOcean was also one of the few cloud companies to report better-than-expected Q3 results, making the actual outlook even murkier for industry.
Related: The tech industry can be an accelerator of change. That’s it.
If you’re serious about artificial intelligence, you probably need the cloud
The importance of proper cloud infrastructure applies even more to big data and artificial intelligence. Data scientists need huge infrastructure to train their models, but don’t necessarily have the infrastructure knowledge to swing it. Nor should they.
Data scientists should also be able to focus on data and statistics and outsource IT work. This is where cloud computing becomes integral to large users like enterprises or small users like lowly academics.
Imagine trying to train a model using the computing power of your laptop, but for some reason you need to turn off the computer. Work stops abruptly until you are able to resume. The same principle applies at scale. By running models in the cloud, you can reduce downtime and speed up the time to run calculations.
Apply it to any AI company. Much of the advances to come in the technology ecosystem will be made possible simply by the cloud.
Related: The vicious cycle of overhiring and layoffs
The benefits of the cloud are also on the front end
Entrepreneurs often focus on the back end when they discuss the benefits of cloud and similar infrastructure, but when implemented correctly, they directly improve the customer experience. The agility and ability to crunch numbers and feed them into algorithms facilitates a personalization that was not possible before.
Additionally, an effective cloud strategy will greatly impact a business’ ability to deliver a reliable visual and auditory experience. If you think this is overblown, consider the current leaders in the B2C end-to-cloud community: Gmail, Google Drive, Google Photos, Netflix, and Prime Video. All of these services have revolutionized the way businesses interact with their customers, which is directly related to their effectiveness in utilizing the cloud for superior customer experience.
While the cloud’s short-term forecast is worrisome, the technology roadmap won’t last forever. Technologists better keep making the leap to the cloud. Change management is not easy, and growing pains can be difficult, especially in a bad market. But the cloud is a panacea that unleashes the enormous potential of technology, too good to pass up.
