Cloud computing has become an invaluable tool for businesses of all sizes. So it comes as no surprise that cloud revenues are expected to reach $411 billion by the year 2020, nearly double the amount in 2016.

As the cloud continues to streamline and enhance business operations, CIOs must prepare their companies to support increasingly dynamic IT environments in the future.

Innovation

Cloud technology is growing rapidly and new releases are available more frequently than ever before. Because time-to-market is crucial to avoid competitors poaching potential customers, CIOs need to enhance their service offerings continually, especially when it comes to new cloud technologies that provide value for their companies.

To do just that, CIOs will need to collaborate closely with cloud vendors and other providers in their line of business.

Top-line

It’s natural for CIOs to focus on boosting efficiencies and savings to their company’s bottom line. However, cloud computing has introduced a plethora of new services and solutions that CIOs can implement to improve sales, such as Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Instead of viewing Dynamics 365 as a support function, CIOs need to take advantage of this unique opportunity and focus more on the cloud’s potential to enhance top-line revenue growth. 

Automation

Many CIOs have failed to take advantage of another cloud offering: virtualization. This allows them to do away with lots of their expensive onsite IT equipment and the manpower required to maintain it. While gaining efficiencies through labor made sense in the past, automation is key to success in a cloud-filled world today and tomorrow.

With cloud technology, automation can occur in various areas of a business’s technology infrastructure. Some of these include application and process automation. They will allow CIOs to provide better user experiences, minimize chances of human error, scale IT needs automatically, and do so with zero costs.

Cohesiveness

Cloud technology allows you to improve upon the traditional customer-supplier relationship. With greater accessibility and mobility, CIOs can and will need to create a cohesive cloud platform comprised of clients, suppliers, business partners, and service providers.

As the company-vs-company playing field reaches saturation, future competition will instead be locked on marketshare and mindshare. This means CIOs must be able to conceptualize, implement, and manage a cohesive cloud platform that brings all relevant parties together.

Brokering

Migration costs used to be a burden in the cloud, but as popularity for the platform increases, costs decrease. This allows CIOs to orchestrate cloud services from multiple vendors. And since changing from one cloud provider to another will be even easier, CIOs need to be prepared to spend more time comparing and selecting providers. They’ll also need to manage competitive SLAs to meet business demands.

And all this is just scratching the surface of cloud technology. As such, business owners like yourself need to make sure that your CIO is ready for any task at hand.

If you don’t have a CIO or are simply looking for an experienced cloud provider who can bring deep expertise to the table, we can help. We’re not called SimplyClouds for nothing; from consultation and migration to customization and maintenance, we know the cloud like we know the backs of our hands. Just give us a call and see for yourself.