The accelerated pace of change on both the technology and business fronts means that companies that are slow to modernize in the cloud are increasingly at risk of getting left behind.
Migrating infrastructure, applications, and systems to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud is an important first step, but it is by no means the last stop on a company’s ongoing transformation journey. A cloud modernization road map helps enterprises thrive, enabling out-of-the-box business innovation along with the ability to continuously evolve and quickly adapt to market changes.
Critical cloud-native functionalities, including serverless, object storage, managed data, managed analytics, and generative artificial intelligence (AI), are no longer experimental technologies that are solely the domain of market leaders. Today, cloud-native capabilities are widely accessible to any organization determined to leverage the cloud model to achieve cost savings, business agility, and operational resilience while enabling more productive and engaged IT talent.
According to AWS research, organizations that modernize on the AWS cloud are experiencing a host of business benefits. Among them:
- 43% increase in revenue growth
- 32% increase in data-driven insights
- 20% reduction in time to deploy new features
- 33% reduction in IT infrastructure spend
Cloud modernization’s business superpower
AWS cloud’s pay-for-consumption model is not only more cost-efficient; elastic capacity is also central to helping organizations pivot and thrive in a continuously changing business landscape. Modernizing IT infrastructure, applications, and data in the cloud enables companies to iterate more quickly, homing in on innovation through trial and error without the time and costs associated with building out data center capabilities.
“It’s too expensive for most organizations to experiment rapidly enough to truly innovate while operating on-premises,” says Jake Burns, enterprise strategist at AWS. “Innovation is largely a numbers game, requiring continuous experimentation to be successful. But you have to first reduce the cost of failure before you can experiment this rapidly. Being in the cloud allows you to reduce the cost of failure, but building a modern cloud infrastructure is how you do it at scale. The cloud can be a superpower, but only if you take advantage of it.”
Consider the example of a company looking to build out AI capabilities to advance key business goals. In a traditional IT model, it would invest in a fleet of servers and storage capacity while recruiting data and AI experts to build and train models — a process that could take years and cost millions of dollars. A modern cloud environment upends that scenario, delivering access to key AI resources and computing capacity in minutes with the click of a button. “If you assume servers and block storage are the right technical solutions to all technical problems, you’ll continue to operate that way,” Burns says. “In a modern cloud world, there are better tools for the job.”
Cloud modernization also paves the way for retaining and attracting top-notch IT talent.
IDC predicts that more than 90% of worldwide organizations will be impacted by the IT skills crisis, amounting to approximately $5.5 trillion in losses caused by product delays, loss of business, and inability to compete effectively. With a modern cloud infrastructure, organizations can attract a stable of motivated professionals who are invested in channeling modern technologies to achieve a competitive business edge.
AWS and its expansive network of partners deliver 200-plus native cloud services, along with a spectrum of training and deployment programs designed to simplify and accelerate the cloud modernization journey. With the right tools and expertise at hand, it’s time to reimagine what’s possible and reinvent business for the modern age.
Want more modernization tips? Check out our next article: “What factors should I consider when modernizing my applications?” Or learn how AWS can help you reduce costs, gain efficiencies, and make the most of your existing investments.