Businesses worldwide are undertaking significant adjustments to their operations and service delivery as they deal with the post-COVID pandemic effects and the current uncertain economic conditions. So, many companies consolidate their IT stacks and move more key business apps to the cloud to improve efficiency.
In this new reality, CIOs are responsible with managing change, balancing supporting innovative services for a competitive edge and decreasing expenses.
Cloud computing: more than a trend
The cloud enables businesses to grow, become nimbler, generate more income, and accomplish business objectives. The pandemic hastened the growth of cloud adoption, which had been occurring for some years. In fact, 48% of IT organizations decided to invest in cloud computing technology advances, according to a Gartner poll of 268 tech company leaders.
Cloud computing has shown to be much more than simply a trend. Sixty percent of business data was kept on the cloud by 2022, and that number was projected to grow as cloud computing became more widely used. By comparison, in 2015, cloud computing only accommodated 30% of a typical company's data needs. The fact that the percentage of data stored on the cloud has doubled in just seven years demonstrates the revolutionary nature of this technology.
Cloud computing will become the paradigm of technology deployment of choice for companies all over the world, as the cloud market is projected to be worth $376.36 billion by 2029. Due to its agility, elasticity, and scalability, cloud computing will continue to be a bastion of safety and innovation, fostering growth during unpredictable times.
The current challenges of the CIO
In the current macroeconomic context CIOs and their CxOs counterparts share responsibility for technology leadership and accountability for business and technological results occuring from digital projects. To create digitally enabled business capabilities that increase revenue, boost profit margin, or promote the mission and constituent satisfaction, CIOs need to collaborate closely with business executives and technology providers.
Management of the costs and cloud waste
Probably the most pressing problem a CIO has to face is the management of the costs. The cloud expenditure has become one of the main concerns, as organizations continue to waste significant cloud spend.
Wasted cloud spend is a major issue and becomes more critical as cloud costs continue to soar. In fact, Flexera says that many organizations waste 32 percent of cloud spend, up from 30 percent last year. However, spend is likely less efficient and likely even higher on average, as many organizations tend to underestimate their amount of waste.
What is cloud waste?
Cloud waste happens when employees overestimate the services needed to achieve a business goal. Cloud waste can go unreported in large corporations when various business divisions have their own budgets to buy cloud services. Gartner estimated that cloud waste cost organizations $26.6 billion in 2021.
Anachronic tech solutions. Dealing with monoliths
CIOs are in charge of making sure that their companies have the IT infrastructure and tools they need to make the market more innovative and flexible. But in many cases, CIOs are stuck with a problem that seems impossible to solve - they inherited a set of legacy applications that are essential to the company's day-to-day operations but have very little room for the upgrades they need to work in today's cloud-native, open-source tech landscape.
"Most legacy core software systems are rigid, old, and fragile to give businesses the flexibility they need to win, serve, and keep customers ", as Forrester analysts report.
Also, CIOs can't just get rid of these systems because they are still important for day-to-day work. Instead, they need to find a way to give them the flexibility and adaptability they need to fully take part in the technological age we live in now.
Cost-control measures and moving to SaaS solutions are top of mind
All organizations' top cloud projects for 2023 are ways to keep costs down. Moving workloads can save money and make a business more flexible.
As more work gets transferred to the cloud, CIOs can pay off the technical debt that comes with running and maintaining traditional data centers. Moving to SaaS solutions eliminates the resources required to manage equivalent on-premises software packages.
Adopting cloud solutions will erase business friction
The cloud has removed many of the barriers that previously prevented information and contact between parties and slowed down business operations. Increasingly automated supply chains and real-time data dashboards are just a couple of the ways that the cloud is assisting businesses in becoming more streamlined and productive.
The cloud has changed business operations and made them more frictionless by giving rapid and simple access to correct information. This has freed up time and resources to concentrate on business development and innovation.
Kubeark for CIOs
At Kubeark we are developing tailor-made solutions that aim to ease the role of the CIOs. As our VP of Product puts it:
CIOs are under pressure to find technology that supports business agility. The current state of the economy has increased pressure on CIOs to choose wisely among their technological expenditures. Companies are focusing on the bottom line and providing useful value as a result of the economic threat, which puts CIOs under pressure to strike a balance between the need for new services and cost-optimization. With the latest Kubeark features - Transactable and Visibility - we help CIOs step up and make informed and effective decisions faster.
Powering cloud revenue expansion
Kubeark's Transactable feature is a powerful tool for optimizing your cloud spend. Transactable automates the entire quote to cash to delivery process, giving you access to your customers' Azure or AWS pre-committed budgets to purchase products and services. This opens new sales channels and provides you with "free money" to drive growth and increase your ROI. Transactable also offers multiple payment alternatives for cloud usage, streamlines your sales process, and reduces the risk of security breaches or human error.
One of the main advantages of using Transactable is the ability to offer multiple payment alternatives for cloud usage. This means that not only can your customers use their cloud budgets to purchase Kubeark products and services, but they can also use them to purchase other software and services, maximizing the value they get from their investment.
By using Transactable, all transactions are directly on the Microsoft Azure or AWS platform, avoiding the need for tenders and vendor selection. This also helps reduce potential security risks and human errors by removing the need to provide access to your Azure or AWS account to unneeded people.
A glimpse into the unknown
CIOs and their counterparts benefit greatly from the Kubeark Business Visibility platform pillar, as it helps them make business choices based on real cloud consumption. They may even discover areas where they can enhance product functionality and lower cloud utilization, leading to further cost savings.
In the Kubeark platform CIOs can see accurate and updated data about the application, product version, deployment, cloud providers, and other reporting indicators.
CIOs of the future
It becomes obvious, that in this post-pandemic, economic and political realities, determined CIOs who make timely decisions while also displaying the emotional dexterity to be tactful and supportive to their peers will be the drivers of the business.
In a nutshell, CIOs of the future will prioritize business needs and technical considerations. Whether it's adapting to different working conditions, meeting the demands of a growing customer base, or rethinking an outdated business model, CIOs will put their attention squarely on the problems facing their company and brainstorm with colleagues from all departments about how technology can help them.
In this scenario, Kubeark offers a unique opportunity for businesses to not only optimize their cloud expenditure, but also to drive growth and explore new revenue streams. By embracing this innovative technology, CIOs can strike a perfect balance between cost-cutting and innovation, while positioning their organizations for long-term success in the ever-changing business landscape.