Cloud provides the agility of IT resources required by businesses

Suresh Kumar, Partner & CIO, Grant Thornton Advisory

“Cloud has changed the way enterprises plan and operate their IT infrastructure, applications and services. One of the biggest advantages of Cloud is business continuity. The entire business continuity strategy of an enterprise can be centered on Cloud. As cloud offers continuity of services in case of any disaster, enterprises can have their DR and backup operations on cloud even for applications hosted out of data center. In the current pandemic situation, cloud has helped organizations continue their businesses without impact.

Cloud can provide IT resources for the agility required by businesses. IT resources can be taken and configured quickly and for the time required. Many a times, organizations require a new business project to be tried before it is actually launched and flexibility of cloud ensures there is no capex expenses need to be incurred. The resources can be scaled up as needed very quickly. Most startups have used cloud effectively for fast growth. The current business environment is making all organizations act like startups and cloud is helping in getting the right resources at the right time.

Though cloud service providers take necessary steps to ensure security of data on their cloud, breaches do happen. To mitigate risk of security breach, organizations can chose to keep their confidential information in IT resources in their data center or private cloud. All other data can be kept on public cloud which offers cost advantage. Hybrid cloud offers best of both worlds and yes, we can consider it as the best option.”