Demystifying cloud adoption

By Udi Geismar

Myth-based fears are weights driving companies away from the cloud and mobility, especially in the field of field workforce management. While consultancy Gartner says that Cloud and Mobility are on the spending priority list for IT departments, and Forrester predicts exponential growth in cloud spending by 2020, just over two-thirds of companies in power management workers say they have little or no mobile access to resource management data and corporate services.
 
Among the main myths faced in the corporate world when we talk about cloud are insecurity, regulatory requirements, standardization and return on investment. But, as we will see below, good planning and the use of services offered by reliable companies allow for a safe and consistent implementation with market and business demands.
 
The Cloud is not insecure, the fear of exposing confidential company and customer data, while pertinent, is not an argument against adopting the Cloud. The reality is that most IT departments are not prepared or resourced to deal with today's growing and complex security threats, but most cloud providers are. In addition, using the cloud also protects data in the event of equipment loss, keeping it in remote access protected by SLAs and security protocols.
 
Regulatory demands are also not the issue, as major providers can ensure that information storage is compliant with laws, even in heavily regulated industries. Another myth is that the Cloud is unreliable, but studies by the Aberdeen group report that 93% companies still struggle with outages and downtime, with rising costs. Cloud providers often have better levels of availability and redundancy, which is particularly important for mobile workforce management, considering the impact of outages in the field and to the end consumer.
 
In its 2014 forecast study, Gartner places Web-scale IT as one of the biggest IT trends, reinventing the way IT services can be delivered. This will allow for the development of flexible and resilient systems that recover from failures faster, and for companies to keep pace they will have to emulate the architecture, processes and practices of exemplary cloud providers, with capabilities that go beyond size but address the system speed and agility scale.
 
Cloud applications also support a range of standard platforms, operating systems and devices, and while services offer levels of customization based on business needs, this standardization is a benefit, especially given the growth in the number of devices and systems. . Gartner also predicts that applications will decline, while applications will continue to grow with the improvement of Javascript powering HTML5.
 
Of course, we must also evaluate the return on investments. A Rackspace survey of US and UK companies revealed that 88% of companies benefited from reduced IT costs and 56% saw increased profits as a result of using cloud services. This adds to the scalability of demand, flexibility, speed of response and freeing up internal IT resources, combining the benefits of mobility and cloud with the capabilities of mobile workforce management software are possible gains between 10 and 20% in productivity.
 
Understanding these myths can dispel fears and chart the path to cloud adoption by organizations with mobile workforce management. The benefits are clear, with the combination of mobility and cloud computing enabling companies to more easily and cost-effectively deploy and scale the latest technology to drive greater productivity, efficiencies and better service levels for consumers.