It has never been more important for organizations to quickly adapt to the unpredictable.
Making smart technology investments can be the key to managing unexpected change. IT leaders are leaning on the cloud as a way to deal with uncertainty and increase resilience, according to a new Google Cloud survey of more than 1,900 executives.
Many forward-thinking organizations are improving financial stability by optimizing technology costs, improving operations using data and artificial intelligence (AI), and accelerating developer productivity safely.
Here’s how three leading organizations are increasing their resilience.
1. Optimizing the cost of technology
When the Southeast Asian digital entertainment company POPS Worldwide migrate its streaming applications to a public cloud environment, the streaming provider initially wanted to combat computing resource limitations and reduce the daily maintenance of its private cloud and locally hosted cloud infrastructure. But after the migration, POPS Worldwide also saw immediate improvements in scalability, performance, and cost—benefits that opened up other areas for opportunity.
POPS Worldwide recently started running its applications using a managed Kubernetes service so its workers can more easily fine-tune computing resources. The ability for employees to monitor and control central processing units (CPUs) and use memory more efficiently immediately reduced backend operation costs by 30%. Cloud infrastructure management now only requires two full-time developer operations (DevOps) engineers, freeing up more resources to develop new features and high-quality streaming content.
In addition, POPS traffic volume Worldwide has increased by about 40 times since its migration in 2019. “We would not have achieved this growth if we had stayed with our previous infrastructure, because the cost would astronomical,” said Martin Papy, chief technology officer. “Before, we only had eight runs [virtual machines] (VMs) in the private cloud. Today, we are running more than 100 VMs and can launch new VMs anytime with just a few clicks. “
The customer experience has also improved significantly. While the company previously suffered from frequent system errors that disrupted the user experience, system infrastructure failures have occurred since the migration.
2. Improving operations using data and AI
Another way today’s leading companies are making progress is using data cloud technologies to increase operational efficiency and act on their business data insights in real time with embedded AI and machine learning (ML) capabilities.
For example, Swiss International Airlines (SWISS) builds a modular cloud data platform which combines all information on conditions and resources to drive the best decisions in various aspects of air travel. While SWISS already has many technology solutions in place, it needs a unified data repository for all crew, passenger, rotation, and technical information.
Instead of trying to “cloudify”—migrate and optimize to the cloud—all of its systems at once, SWISS is building a cloud layer on top of its data tools and silos that simulate minute-by-minute conditions. in its operations. This enables the airline to get all its relevant data in one place and automate some parts of the decision-making process with the help of cloud-based AI and ML solutions.
“For the first time, we have a centralized overview of what these variable costs, such as noise fees, air traffic fees, or machine rental costs mean the cost of larger scale,” said Martin Apsel-von zur Gathen, head of planning and operations management. “It helps us better quantify decisions and lead to more savings.”
This new data-driven decision-making approach will help SWISS optimize flight rotation planning by automatically matching the best aircraft to routes based on passenger demand. The new cloud layer also allows the airline to model scenarios based on weather data to help make accurate predictions of potential delays and plan accordingly.
Adding to the list of upsides, cloud implementation has helped SWISS increase revenue and reduce fuel costs and other costs such as airport noise charges. This saved the airline a million Swiss francs (about US$1 million) in the first 14 weeks of operation alone.
3. Speed up developer productivity securely
When the cosmetics giant L’Oreal started to create a data platform to sync and aggregate all internal and external data, it experienced challenges in the existing developer environment. Developers code locally on physical laptops, presenting security risks and making it difficult to set up new environments. They can’t start coding until they install everything they need—code editors, libraries, and utilities.
More challenging, teams work at different speeds using different methods and development solutions that each have a different license. There is no consistent security posture, and cost management is a huge headache.
To solve these issues and strengthen its global developer workforce, L’Oreal fully managed development environments are adopted to facilitate developer onboarding and productivity. These cloud-based environments’ advanced security features and customizable environment support multiple integrated development environments (IDEs) and popular developer tools—reducing much of the friction that hinders innovation and slows developers down.
Onboarding times drop from months to days because developers can quickly deploy new environments in minutes and clicks. And with code no longer stored locally, developers can also access rapid environments at any time from browsers or local IDEs. Now, instead of performing time-consuming peripheral tasks, L’Oreal developers now have more time to focus on writing core business logic—and driving the bottom line.
Change the stability of the cloud
Cloud computing has great potential to help organizations improve experiences, improve agility, drive efficiencies, and open opportunities for revenue. At the same time, the cloud allows companies and government entities to face and respond to unpredictable economic conditions in ways that were often impossible until now.
To strengthen your organization’s financial stability, the cloud can be the key to a foundation that drives maximum value without slashing budgets or letting go of valuable talent.
Learn more about how businesses are addressing financial stability in the cloud HERE.
