Top advantages of cloud computing for NZ businesses
New Zealand was quick to recognise the advantages of cloud computing, with 88% of Kiwi organisations already accessing emails via the cloud in 2013.
Many businesses in New Zealand understand the financial advantages of using the cloud, says ICONZ-Webvisions.
ICONZ-Webvisions says cloud computing can turn large, irregular, forecasted Capex into focused and predictable Opex spending, and senior executives have been quick to grasp the cost advantages.
Now, using cloud-based services to host desktop, CRM, analytics and business intelligence is increasingly common, according to ICONZ-Webvisions.
The next step is leveraging the cloud to build organisation-wide competitive advantages to fuel growth, identify changes in the market, and increase efficiency, says ICONZ-Webvisions.
According to ICONZ-Webvisions, the cloud can improve collaboration, help a business gain insight with big data, and increase agility.
Increasing collaboration
Working in the cloud removes the constraints of location and time and lets your staff work from practically anywhere with an internet connection.
This can also encourage collaboration across a business. Project teams can be brought together to share their knowledge and expertise that may have been too niche or costly to engage.
As a result, an organisation could benefit from increasing scale and specialisation.
As an example of this, The Ministry of Education uses ICONZ-Webvisions cloud-based services to bring remote schools together, and provide access to learning materials not otherwise available locally. Through interactive e-learning, students can learn from specialist teachers dotted around the country.
Making decisions with big data
The cloud can be used to process enormous amounts of raw data.
Its elastic computing capacity can be applied to expansive data sets and data analysis can result in key insights and trends not yet apparent to your competitors.
Organisations can learn customer preferences and deliver more relevant offers.
Similar to collaboration, information once held on branch servers and employees' hard-drives, can now be shared across the organisation.
Furthermore, the cloud makes these insights available when and where it's needed.
It enables businesses to get relevant information at key decision points - guiding processes and decision makers with automated analysis in real time.
"Big data analysis is really driving the next wave of cloud adoption. Clients see opportunities earlier, react and scale accordingly," says Jack Talbot, ICONZ-Webvisions NZ GM.
Increasing agility
The scalability of cloud-based resources is already well known. With cloud computing organisations can handle unexpected spikes, and this is especially true for software developers.
Animoto, an Amazon-owned start-up, expanded from 50 to 3500 virtual servers within three days, for instance.
The cloud reduces developers' time to market, meaning organisations can prototype new applications faster, gaining feedback and fail-faster, at lower overall costs.
