Ninety percent of executives agree that for their organization to be agile and resilient to market changes, they need to fast forward their digital transformation with cloud computing at its core. In this time of distributed workforces, off-premise public cloud technology has become a compelling way to maintain productivity and keep projects running smoothly. In fact, companies migrating to public cloud infrastructure can expect to see 30-40% savings in their total cost of ownership (TCO) for the technology, according to Accenture.

Why are so many executives and companies moving their digital infrastructure to the cloud? Udemy instructor Neal Davis is a highly experienced AWS Cloud Solutions Architect and the founder of Digital Cloud Training, where he teaches global students the fundamentals of cloud technologies. With over 20 years working in IT, he’s been in the virtualization and cloud computing space since its inception. Recently, he shared with us four benefits of cloud adoption and why you’ll see skills in this technology grow more in-demand. 

1. Optimize IT costs 

First, let’s look at cost. Most organizations don’t want to spend money on data centers, hardware, storage, and networking. It’s a large amount of capital to buy into a system and then have it depreciate in a few years. Even when companies want to stop using some of their systems for a period of time, the cost remains in the underlying infrastructure. In public cloud services like AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, tech teams have more flexibility in which systems they use and can pay as needs change.  

In detail, here’s how cloud technology optimizes overall IT costs:

2. Support and secure a remote workforce 

Your remote workforce needs the tools to communicate and carry on with their job as if they were in an office together. On-premise, private cloud solutions do offer remote management administration, but it’s not always a seamless experience. Public cloud services are designed for remote administration. It’s API-driven, so no matter where you or your team is, your systems are still accessible and manageable.

In fact, many tools now commonly used to empower remote workers are possible because of private cloud technology.

3. Adapt to changing consumer behavior

How do you adapt to changing consumer behavior? It varies by industry, but let’s use banking as an example. Although most have an online option, banks still rely heavily on physical contact, and people regularly visiting branches. To ensure their business continued as normal, the agility of cloud services allows banks to expand their online services.

Here are a few examples of cloud use cases for scalability and elasticity, and managed services:

4. Maintain business continuity 

Business continuity is important anytime, but one of the challenges is that our patterns have changed. Could you execute a disaster recovery situation if you were unable to leave your home or go to a data center? It’s difficult. That’s an advantage to the cloud, it’s distributed in nature, and has lots of deployment options across different regions. They’re designed for full tolerance and high availability and have our internet-based access and remote managers. 

Here are the benefits of being fully in the cloud:

Considerations when adopting cloud trends

The best defense against the uncertainty and keep business agile is to fully embrace cloud technology. As cloud technology continues to grow in 2021, roughly 23%, the future looks to be cloud based. Want to help your team develop these skills? Explore how key IT skills can promote business continuity