Is your cloud service really ready to evolve?

As with most consumer products, cloud comes in all shapes and sizes. At the most basic level, many businesses perceive cloud services to be software applications that are available over the internet on a monthly pay-as-you-go subscription model. But any business that jumps into the cloud without looking far into the future may find themselves strapped into the equivalent of last year’s business suit that’s already gone out of fashion, and will be an increasingly bad fit as they mature.

That’s because some cloud offerings are simply legacy software systems hosted on a cloud computing infrastructure. Just adding the word ‘cloud’ to old applications has been referred to as cloud-washing, similar to the way whitewashing gives a superficial new look to an old building – and sometimes more unkindly known as ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.

True cloud

For both cloud providers and cloud services consumers, the cloud experience isn’t defined at a single point in time, nor by a single touch-point. True software-as-a-service is not just a snapshot of an application, bolted on to the next-best available hardware and hosted in a spanking new data centre by a third party. It’s a continuous journey, a business evolution guided by a roadmap that equally evolves with time, to provide long-term business value.

For true cloud providers this starts from scratch, designing systems from the ground up, with the end goal of providing the customer with a more rapid realisation of ROI with reliable, elastic services undergoing continual innovation. A core principle is multitenancy – customers share the same software and infrastructure, so each benefit from the same upgrades, shared maintenance, and shared learning while operating in isolation from other users from a security point of view. And speaking about security, it needs to be in every layer of the cloud architecture, not just represented by the burly security guards at the data centre entrance.

The most immediate benefit of cloud is rapid deployment, as the computing setup is already up and running. This translates into more rapid time to market and therefore faster time to value. The pay-for-use model also saves upfront costs and makes future cost plans more predictable. In fact, this has completely revolutionised the way IT projects are planned. What was previously handled as a complex capital expenditure (CAPEX) initiative is now presented to corporate board members as a much more manageable operating expenses (OPEX) model.

Business evolution

But the ability to evolve is the real deal-winner. Companies need to maintain competitive parity with the latest systems, leading technology, modern best practices, and harness a millennial workforce, while at the same time differentiating themselves in the marketplace to maintain a business advantage and carve out more market share.

For the cloud provider, this means having a viable roadmap for extending functionality and expanding the range of services on an ongoing basis, with updates released transparently in the cloud environment.

For the cloud customer, this means having the ability to extend their applications on the same platform, connect to other service providers, and integrate with the mobile world with ease, all with a reduced cost of adaptation.

In all senses, cloud providers that have complete suites of integrated product, with a horizontal offering spanning business lines within an organisation, and a complete vertical stack of integrated technology layers are already ahead of the game. As Shawn Price, SVP of Oracle Cloud and Product Business Groups, notes, Oracle’s suite of products represents real competitive advantage. “If you look at it as data as a service, 600 SaaS apps, 40 plus platform offerings, all clustered around infrastructure, with portability between on-premise and the world, and openness, I think you’ve got a completely different palette than any other company.”

Product readiness and a clear roadmap

Oracle has integrated infrastructure, middleware layer, and best-of-breed apps that gives our customers true cloud, with the ability to rapidly kick-start their newest business initiatives and then continuously evolve. Oracle has a clear advantage with the comprehensive suite of applications currently available, and the power to extend those applications and services. It’s all laid out on their ‘Product Readiness’ section, so everyone can see where they are right now and where they’re going in the future, which means you know where your business will be in the future too.