The cloud is not merely a differentiator. It is much more than that. It is a strategic requirement for long-term success.

Ten years ago, the move to the cloud represented a breakthrough choice. Now it's about keeping up and providing businesses with the services they expect. Not surprisingly, by the end of 2020, 83 percent of enterprise workloads have moved to the cloud. If you are not among those who have made the move to the cloud, your teams may already be at a disadvantage. 

Not convinced enough? Well, just look at your competitors. 

If they have immediate access to the latest features and security updates and you do not, it is not hard to guess which company will enjoy greater benefits.

Want to know how the cloud constitutes a long-term investment for your teams?

With on-prem solutions, manual upgrades will need to be made each time new features arise. The costs, of course, fall on the IT team, which needs both time and budget to make the changes, and often downtime must be taken into account, which can impact the entire organization.

Well, this means that each time it is updated, teams face a learning curve on features they have never seen before. It also means that because so many new features are introduced at once, there is a greater risk of bugs being detected, and fixes for these bugs may take time.

With the cloud, on the other hand, you won't stumble over these hiccups and slowdowns

Releases can be as small as a single bug fix or a product enhancement, enabled for a tot. of customers, in order to reduce risk. If something goes wrong, the change is easy to undo and its impact is limited. So, rather than waiting three months for a system bug to be fixed, teams can get the fix just in time. 

With this approach, new features are released regularly and in small batches, and it is easier for your teams to keep up with the changes instead of having to retrain several times a year. This, makes your teams competitive, agile and always connected to the systems they use on a daily basis.

Cloud pushes your teams toward creativity and strategic work

On-site hosting of software and products takes more and more time from technical teams. Downsizing to provide users with more storage space, inventory, or processing power can take days, if not weeks or even months. In addition, any major incidents fall entirely on the shoulders of your IT Team.

And do you know what that means?

It means that bug fixes, problem management, and any complications, are the responsibility of your vendor. This way, the IT team can avoid tedious and fruitless work, such as installing new servers or troubleshooting. Most importantly, it can focus on the strategic and creative work that is essential and unique to your business.

By the way, most IT teams are already overworked. And being overworked is the main reason why employees (and particularly high performers) leave on-prem. The cloud, on the other hand, lightens the workload. It reduces the to-do list, allowing teams to focus on the tasks of greatest value to the business. In fact, many tasks are outsourced to a vendor, which streamlines much of the manual operations. Moving server support , uptime, updates and security patches from the IT team to your cloud vendor will help you retain your best talent. In short, the cloud prevents teams from being overwhelmed with "to do" tasks, thus foiling the risk of burnout that professionals can incur.

Stress, it is known, leads to disengagement and lack of proactivity. Therefore, cloud priorities are focus, competence and productivity. At the end of the day, companies in order to achieve results must promote a culture of psychological well-being above all. It is essential to ensure the right work-life balance for their employees. In this way, it will be possible to reap long-term success. 

Clouds serving non-technical teams

With on-prem, any change, whether it is a security upgrade, a new feature, or more computing power, has to go through IT. Not only does this burden the technical team, but it also slows down non-technical teams, taking away their ability to make rapid improvements to their workflow, systems, and team dynamics.

The secret of the Cloud, however, is automation. Indeed, features such as automatic scaling and immediate security and feature updates enable teams to be agile and snappy. In addition, individual contributors can embrace new features and benefits that enhance their workflows, without going through lengthy approval processes. 

Studies show that employee and team awareness is strongly correlated with job performance, satisfaction, and retention.

Hence, the benefits have a ripple effect, empowering teams to do the best work possible and giving those same teams autonomy, gratification, a sense of corporate loyalty, and the confidence to pursue goals and come up with creative solutions.

Cloud facilitates remote work and distributed teams

4.7 million Americans work remotely. Ninety-five percent of employees say they want to work remotely. 26% say they left a job because the company did not support remote work. 66% say offices will be obsolete by 2030.

 The COVID-19 pandemic, has taught us that the ability to work remotely can become crucial and indispensable in an instant. Meanwhile, however, for companies still completely on-prem, remote work continues to be complicated. Although, on-prem installations can be accessed remotely, maintaining security at the same time becomes complicated. Between passwords, firewalls, VPN barriers, and architectural limitations, on-prem can wreak havoc. 

Conversely, cloud solutions are accessible from anywhere through an Internet connection. And security is an inherent condition of the Cloud. So, no marasmus is at risk. Moreover, the same advantages that enable employees to work remotely-both full-time and in emergencies-also make it easy to support distributed teams.

The great benefit of distributed teams and remote work is that it gives you access to a larger talent pool , both geographically and by extending positions to those who must work from home for reasons such as disability or caring for an elderly parent or sick child.

So? What are enterprises waiting for to improve productivity through the Cloud?