Is cloud adoption for business driving agile implementation and security needs?

The rate of acceleration of hybrid and cloud adoption for deploying business management systems has increased over the last 12 months and according to CIO.com is set to gain more momentum in 2017.  The article quotes Forrester Research’s analysis covering cloud predictions for 2017; the “global market will top $146 billion in 2017, up from just $87 billion in 2015 and is growing at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate”.  Enterprise sized organisations are cited as a major influence in this upturn, as more are looking at switching from private to public clouds due to fast moving improvements in performance and security in this infrastructure.

What other factors are driving cloud adoption?

In his recent cloud option blog, Sri Srinivasan from Microsoft discusses what he sees as current factors in technology investment and business applications, “… preferring shorter implementations, fewer customisations, repeatable industry or domain solutions, and continuous updates. Most noticeable is the shift from systems of record to systems of intelligence.”

Cloud as a disruptive deployment technology is shaping the wider business CRM and ERP selection and implementation requirements.  It is a two-way street; whilst IT decision makers who opt for on-premise or hybrid start to expect the same agile and cost effective approach cloud customers receive; but also those who are shifting to public cloud (such as Microsoft Azure) expect the same level of data security they had on-premise.

Data security is a key focus for cloud providers

There is growing focus on data security in the cloud, with the advent of a voluntary code of conduct set up by cloud infrastructure providers such as Microsoft (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE)), in relation to comply with new EU legislation (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)) which comes into effect in May 2018. According to an article in The Register, Alban Schmutz, chairman of CISPE, said: “Any customer will know that if their cloud infrastructure provider is complying with the CISPE code of conduct, their data will be protected to clear standards. CISPE code of conduct provides Europeans with the confidence that their information will not be used for anything other than what they stipulate. The CISPE compliance mark clearly addresses this, providing consistency across Europe, what European customers call for.”

At the end of 2016 the Azure ExpressRoute for Dynamics 365 for Operations was launched by Microsoft, which lets customers connect their on-premises infrastructure to Azure data centres using a dedicated, private connection that has high availability, reliability and low latency.  Customers can connect to a variety of applications such as Office 365 as well as supported Azure services.

Will agile implementations become the norm?

Agile methodology is a commonly used phrase in software implementations, which focusses on an iterative approach, requiring flexibility, teamwork, empowerment and self-organisation.  The objective is very much about speed, easier adoption and a quicker return on investment.  We have written previously about Microsoft’s Lifecycle Services which provide the foundation of a more collaborative approach to deploying, running and maintaining business software.

According to Sri Srinivasan, four out of five enterprise cloud customers are selecting Dynamics 365 as their business application of choice.  As a Tier One Microsoft Cloud Solutions Provider, Prodware is helping Microsoft Dynamics customers navigate their way around their cloud adoption choices, contact us to find out more.