Over the past few months, we have all learned the need for agility during these uncertain times. This has exposed the need to move quickly, creatively, and cost-effectively to accomplish business goals and to stay relevant in the marketplace.
To do that requires a level of digital transformation even greater than the past. And to accomplish that goal requires key aspects of leveraging cloud-based technologies and agile development and operational processes.
Continued cloud adoption increase
A survey of over 500 IT professionals by IDG in June 2020 reveals that cloud now represents a third of the IT spend, as a clear majority of organizations plan to use cloud services for over half of their infrastructure and applications. The graphic below shows the increase from June 2020 to December 2021.
No doubt the increase of remote workers has driven some of this uptake in cloud adoption planning as well.
In addition, a July 21, 2020, McKinsey Report, the report states that “leaders need to accelerate their journey to the cloud in order to digitize quickly and effectively in the wake of COVID-19.”
The report continues and states that “cloud platforms can help deploy new digital customer experiences in days rather than months and can support analytics that would be uneconomical or simply impossible with traditional technology platforms.”
According to the article, the ramification of not moving toward a cloud-based strategy is that you will create an opening for market competition to encroach on your business.
Agile operational models
More focus on agile operational models is needed to adjust and pivot as you need in today’s challenging times. The McKinsey report states that to be truly agile, the new model “combines cloud-based digital technologies and agile operational capabilities in an integrated, well-sequenced approach that can rapidly accelerate digital strategy and transformation.”
For some organizations, agile development and operational models are already ingrained in the culture. For others, this is new and takes some new processes, education, and time.
At Valitra, we’ve helped agile newcomers develop streamlined processes built upon phases where we continuously launch new functionalities. For organizations already using agile methods, we can hit the ground running and add value immediately.
Some examples of new agile solutions
Several of our clients have incorporated these two aspects during the pandemic to strategically position themselves for success in the latter part of 2020 and beyond.
Some client initiatives included
- A real estate company launched virtual open houses — adding video call links to their listings to allow people to view a house during the initial lock down and also to meet social distancing requirements.
- A streaming video service saw increased demand for their services. Valtira worked with the company to scale their systems to support increased viewership. This included a range of initiatives with the Valtira DevOps team.
- A personalized memorabilia company needed to launch a new eCommerce solution in support of 1,000,000 organizations prior to the 2020-21 school year. Valtira developed a Shopify cloud-based eCommerce platform including a range of integrations to successfully launch their solution. To learn more, read the case study on our website.
Many other customers have taken this time to work with us to create new dashboards, integrated disparate systems, reviewed internal legacy systems, deployed new cloud solutions, created new apps, and completed cloud cost analysis to name just a few.
These initiatives help make our clients agile and provide the ability to pivot as the business environment changes and uncertainty sets in from the pandemic, social issues, and the upcoming election. To learn how Valtira can help you be more agile, contact us.