All too often, entrepreneurs and business leaders wake up to find they have become shackled by outdated technology that limits growth in their organizations. The list of challenges is seemingly endless: duplication caused by short-term workarounds, siloed data, high operating costs, difficulties scaling and security vulnerabilities from patching gaps across different systems. There is growing recognition that hosting computer services and data remotely on the cloud is the answer instead of keeping systems on-premises. However, organizations across healthcare, manufacturing, education, and the government sector, in particular, have been slow to adopt.
In the public sector, citizens are experiencing rising costs as public organizations struggle to tackle cybersecurity threats and be prepared for future issues such as climate change-related instability. In the U.K. and continental Europe, some leaders have seen the light. In 2012, the U.K. launched a program called G-Cloud to promote the adoption of cloud computing across government agencies. By 2016, cloud usage had jumped from 38% to 78% of public services, and annual savings totaled over £725 million ($908 million). Over 90% of cloud solutions suppliers are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Germany and France also launched the GAIA-X project to establish a secure European cloud infrastructure, and it has put in place a marketplace connecting public institutions with service providers called GovMarket. The same kind of progress is possible in the private sector. By accelerating migration to the cloud in a secure, structured way, business leaders can start freeing up funds to reinvest in other priorities.
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