In an article published recently by Computer Weekly, author Caroline Donnelly explores how recent improvements to the "speed limit" of sending data to the cloud have made the technology more accessible than ever. Given this, enterprises should double down on their efforts to move their data off-premise.
At the Google Cloud Next Conference in San Francisco, executive chairman of Alphabet (Google's parent company) Eric Schmidt spoke of these speed limits and how they've been problematic for companies so far. “There was a speed limit, and that speed limit was defined by our ability to work with the data we have and the install base that you have, and moving it into this new model,” he said, "the 'new model' allows firms to deploy and update applications at a faster pace than ever before, and handle far higher amounts of user traffic." With the new model ideas and products developed on an individual workstation can be in the cloud and scalable within seconds. It's that easy, Schmidt says.
Schmidt also gives two examples of recent products that have been wildly successful but heavily dependent on cloud services - Pokemon Go and Snapchat. Pokemon Go, an augmented reality mobile game app based on the popular 90's anime (and a favorite of PaperFree staff) experienced 50 times more demand in its first two hours than had ever been optimistically planned. Though this did bring about difficulty in users connecting to its server, the fact that it was able to operate at the capacity that it did under load was a testament to the Google Cloud service it was hosted on. And, also in the mobile apps market is Snapchat, a video and photo-sharing service whose lightning fast development for Android and iPhone platforms is credited to Google's cloud infrastructure. Snapchat was also developed with very little available capital thanks to Google having already done the hard lifting. To enterprises considering joining the cloud, Schmidt says “[You might say] I’m not trying to be Pok├®mon Go, but if you could you’d be pretty happy. Think about the global success. So you might as well plan for global success and infinite demand because, even if you don’t get it, your architecture will be right and your costs will be lower” and “Are you not planning to be like Snapchat? Well, I think everyone here represents a corporation that would be happy to be as successful as they are,” he added.
To companies who have delayed moving to the cloud or are working on it as they can, he says “Just get to the cloud now. Just go there now. There is no time to waste anymore.”
Cloud services have often touted the "adopt or die" threat over the years, but as Donnelly reports, these services now have the success stories to back them up. Amazon anyone? She also lists other leading corporations who are currently undertaking massive migration projects with Google: Disney, Verizon, and Colgate-Palmolive, who transferred 28,000 employees onto the Google G Suite over the course of a weekend.
The size and complexity of the projects moving to the cloud, with the scope of the short timeframes they're being done in, is a fascinating and exciting view into the elvolving world of cloud services and their unlimited potential. Instead of being used for overflow storage, more and more companies are taking the "lift and shift" approach and moving their entire operations off-premise and reaping the benefits of scalability, reliability, and cost savings.
Read more on this article on Computer Weekly