The Major Role Of Cloud Companies in Covid-19 Pandemic.

Being an early adopter of new technology can often come with more costs than benefits. Because of this, companies across the world tend to be slow on the uptake with digital innovation. The pandemic, which forced hundreds of millions of workers to shelter in place and essentially move all operations and most of daily life online, caught many of us off-guard.

In pre-Covid-19, most businesses had just begun their cloud-migration journeys. Research conducted by Accenture in 2019 found that 90% of enterprises had “adopted cloud technology in some form”. On average, those enterprises only had about 20–40% of their workloads in the cloud.

Even these initial steps were significant. Pre-pandemic, market research company “Technavio”predicted the cloud-migration-services market would grow by US$7.1 billion by 2024. This would result in a compound annual growth rate of 24%.

Post-pandemic, however, these figures are expected to boom. A study conducted after Covid-19’s impact found 87% of “global IT decision-makers” believed Covid-19 would cause firms to accelerate their migration to the cloud.

Accenture is investing in this transformation. Over the next three years, the company will invest US$3 billion along with the formation of a new multi-service group,’’ Accenture Cloud First” which combines the expertise of 70,000 cloud professionals and the power of Accenture’s industry and technology capabilities, ecosystem partnerships and commitment to responsible business.

Towards this, businesses can use tools to make their navigation of the cloud a smooth and fruitful one. Accenture released one such tool at the end of 2019 “My Nav” which helps their clients identify the right cloud solutions for their specific requirements.

Accenture drew on its experience with 34,000 cloud projects to create MyNav. “MyNav shows customised and optimal journeys to the cloud for every company, irrespective of where its starting point is,” says Groleau. “The MyNav platform enables businesses to discover, assess, design and simulate end-to-end cloud solutions at scale. By providing a bespoke, cloud-migration roadmap, myNav enables enterprises to navigate the complexity of cloud migration with speed and accuracy.”

Bill Gates once famously said: “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.” The Microsoft co-founder’s quote can be adapted for this contemporary fork in the road. The data and research all suggest that there will be two types of businesses in the next five years — those that are primarily or entirely on the cloud and those that are out of business.