3 minute read

Behind Every Silver Lining, There Is a Cloud

Information is the lifeblood of any retail organization and keeping the flow of mission-critical information fast and healthy is essential. When the cloud phenomenon first took off, the big question among retailers was whether to jump to the cloud or stay on premise, to maintain their existing solutions or invest in new technology. They were faced with a big decision about what could and what couldn’t be moved into the cloud.

On one side of the argument you have a contingent of information technology professionals already reaping the benefits of cloud computing. They assert that the future of information technology is in the cloud – that companies need to get on board by moving their applications to the cloud now. On the other side you have old-school information technology professionals with an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. They rightly point out that these traditional applications are often the backbone of a company’s business and argue that running them on dedicated infrastructure seems to be working just fine. So why tinker with a good thing?

A cloud platform deployment has a lot of advantages:

For all its convenience, flexibility and scalability, the cloud platform also comes with some pitfalls:

Many agree that the benefits of cloud computing outweigh its risks. But should you simply jump into the pool with the others? A careful strategy to re-engineer your applications platform into the cloud could have significant cost savings and operational efficiencies. It may be beneficial to conduct a “Total Cost of Ownership” analysis before making such a strategic decision.

And maybe this kind of binary, all-or-nothing, lift and shift debate does not do justice to the complexity companies face when they weigh cloud adoption. Maybe a middle path that takes a smarter, longer-term view of enterprise cloud adoption and cloud competence is a better approach, and a good software and technology partner should be able to help your company understand and evaluate cloud computing so you can determine whether to incorporate it into your information technology strategy.

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