It’s hard to imagine pulling off an enterprise-level digital transformation without cloud technology. A successful evolution requires both agility and centralized governance, neither of which on-prem IT infrastructure can provide. Cloud, however, offers both.
As businesses adapt their enterprise strategies to pave the way for the digital age, it’s no surprise cloud adoption is growing rapidly. Cloud makes it easy for employees to work from anywhere – and ensures they can do so safely – at a time when more employees are remote than ever before. Cloud also reduces technology costs and gives IT leaders more visibility into their systems.
With these benefits in high demand, Gartner forecasts the global cloud services market will grow to $257.9 billion by the end of 2020, a 6.3 percent increase over 2019.
Atlassian Cloud Enterprise enables your business to keep up with a rapidly evolving landscape, making it an essential component of your enterprise strategy. Here are four ways Cloud Enterprise enables agility for your growing organization.
Cloud powers a distributed enterprise workforce
Perhaps the greatest benefit of cloud is that it allows your team to work anywhere they have an internet connection. The enterprise workforce is not only large, but has become more dispersed across the globe, so any successful enterprise strategy will have to incorporate more collaborative ways of working. Cloud fosters collaboration and ensures seamless operations for teams, whether they’re at home, in an office, or on the go.
About 48 percent of employees are likely to work remotely at least some of the time after the pandemic dust finally settles, according to a recent Gartner poll. This means that, at any given time, almost half of your team could be working from somewhere outside the office. At the same time, businesses are hiring more freelance and contract workers. A recent Upwork report indicates that a majority of hiring managers will utilize independent talent in 2020, in part to guard against risk in turbulent market conditions but also to account for a shrinking number of top professionals who are willing to work full time with one organization.
Need to access Jira while you’re en route to a meeting? No problem.
Cloud ensures these teams can continue working together, no matter how they’re distributed. Atlassian users can take advantage of this flexibility with our Cloud Enterprise solution, which allows access to our core solutions from anywhere – even on the go. Need to access Jira while you’re en route to a meeting? No problem. Boards, backlogs, road maps, CI/CD dev integrations, and insights are all available from a mobile phone.
Rest assured, your team’s data is still secure, even if your employees aren’t in the office. By encrypting data both at rest and in transit, Atlassian’s Cloud Enterprise keeps data as secure as on-prem solutions, if not more so.
Cloud keeps data safe (and enterprises compliant)
A full 94 percent of businesses claim that security improved when they moved to the cloud, according to RapidScale. That’s because cloud is more flexible than on-prem when it comes to security updates.
The cybersecurity threat landscape is immense, and evolving rapidly, which is why it’s so pivotal to an enterprise strategy. In 2017, a large consumer credit platform was breached, revealing millions of sensitive user data and damaging the company’s brand and executive team. A company’s reputation, and therefore their bottom line, are at risk if consumer’s trust in their ability to keep data safe wavers. This is why constant security upkeep is critical. On-prem system upgrades are time-consuming and costly. Cloud, on the other hand, allows businesses to implement security upgrades in real time, without a heavy lift from their IT departments. These real-time updates ensure that your team’s data is always protected against the latest known cyber threats.
Cloud also protects data from getting lost. Did your computer freeze mid-session? Annoying, but fortunately, automatic data backups save your work as you go. And cloud solutions are typically built with plans for disaster recovery. In the event of a more serious incident, such as a flood or a fire, your data can be recovered within hours, if not sooner.
These features are all central to Atlassian Cloud Enterprise. For additional security, our administrative controls also allow you to integrate with cloud access security brokers (CASBs) and your identity provider, localize your data storage, and enable two-factor authentication.
Governance is also core to Cloud Enterprise since enterprises, which tend to be public companies, often have to adhere to strict governance and federal regulations around customer data treatment. Atlassian complies with complex GDPR regulations by default, incorporating the right to be forgotten in every product. Cloud Enterprise also helps companies meet their compliance and regulatory requirements for ISO, SOC, GDPR, and Privacy Shield, and is certified compliant for ISO27001, ISO27018, SOC2/SOC3, and PCI-DSS, among others.
Cloud centralizes administration and governance
Your CIO needs a 360-degree view of their IT systems to govern and optimize usage. Only cloud can provide this visibility, because it updates user data across products in real time.
Digital tools help businesses transform, but enterprises often end up with incompatible technology stacks and systems that don’t integrate well together. The result is poor integration and data-sharing between products, making it difficult to set controls and draw insights from data.
Cloud centralizes administration and governance, giving your IT teams more control over user administration. Even when users are dispersed across products and geographies, usage and data are centrally visible through one centralized administrator hub for all applications. This gives your business the flexibility to set up users in a way that meets each user’s needs, whether that’s by geography, line of business, or security permissions.
Centralized administration in Cloud Enterprise also gives IT teams more control over releases. Your administrators can test the rollout of any Atlassian product update or new app in a sandbox copy of their environment to minimize disruptions in your team’s work stream.
Enterprise Cloud also provides organizational insights, giving your team real-time visibility into security and utilization of Atlassian products across departments. This allows teams to collaborate more easily, and administrators to get the data they need to make decisions with a central hub that allows them to manage roles and access permissions for users across products and instances.
Cloud reduces technology spend
Cloud systems, when implemented successfully, bring huge potential for cost savings, all while increasing your team’s productivity.
How is cloud so efficient? To start, cloud eliminates the need for tech teams to buy and install hardware. Once a cloud-based solution is in use, users get instant access to product updates – including bug and security fixes and new features.
In fact, large enterprises migrating to the cloud can improve the delivery of IT services by up to 50 percent, according to BCG. This frees up time for technical teams to focus on more strategic, customer-facing work. And because there are no surprise costs when upgrading tech, businesses can better forecast and set budgets that support their enterprise strategy.
Cloud ensures your team doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel on every project
Cloud also ensures your team doesn’t need to reinvent the wheel on every project. Atlassian Cloud, for example, can automate many repetitive manual processes across multiple projects. These capabilities are embedded within our products so you won’t have to purchase an add-on or write a single line of code.
Cloud migration is a growing component of enterprise strategy
Cloud migration is accelerating as more businesses realize it needs to be a part of their enterprise strategy. In fact, over 90 percent of new Atlassian customers choose our cloud solutions, because they allow teams to move faster while improving ROI.
Cloud Enterprise users are more productive because they don’t have to deal with the headaches that come with on-prem systems. The result is faster decision-making and increased speed to market – just what a modern digital transformation strategy calls for.