Photo by Alex Holyoake on Unsplash

 

In my neighborhood, we have a boutique sports shoe store, which, like several other businesses, had to stay closed to help curb the spread of COVID-19. I recently spoke to the business owner, who was surprisingly optimistic despite the shutdown. This businessman had used this time to adapt his business to using digital technology and engage select customers. He enhanced his store’s online presence, set personal appointments using interactive video chat where his staff could market the right styles and then scheduled private appointments for customers to visit his store in safe numbers to try and purchase the merchandise. He thinks that some of these tools are here to stay and he doesn’t see himself completely going back to the old way of doing business.

 

We are in an unprecedented time with COVID-19. While the last few years have seen a significant shift in IT strategies towards digitization, the pandemic situation is forcing companies of all sizes to rethink their strategies and offer better customer experiences.

 

This trend is also reflected in the recent Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report. According to the report   – 

1. Cloud adoption continues to accelerate with 20% of Enterprises spending more than $1M per month on their cloud bill.
2. 93% have a multi-cloud strategy in place.
3. 57% have central cloud teams to manage their cloud operations.
4. 51% of enterprises reported using cloud-managed service providers (MSPs) to manage public cloud use.
5. 58% are using containers and Kubernetes to manage container workloads.

 

COVID-19 has definitely made Enterprises rethink their digitization goals, and if anything, put a really sharp focus to accelerate digitization. This trend is also evident from the following data points in the recent Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report – 

1. Enterprises expect to accelerate public cloud adoption even more with more than 50% of workloads expected to be in the cloud over the next 12 months.
2. 59% of the Enterprises expect their cloud usage to increase following COVID-19.
3. 73% of organizations plan to optimize the existing use of cloud (cost savings), making it the top initiative for the fourth year in a row. Organizations think that they are wasting 30% of their cloud spend today.
4. Knowledge, technology complexity, and application dependencies for migration remain the biggest challenge for cloud adoption.

 

In our own experience over the last couple of months, while a very small number have decided to defer projects, a large majority have sharpened their focus by training their digitization projects on specific near term outcomes of resource optimization, eliminate waste while increasing digital presence to react to market demands, that help them survive and thrive in the post-COVID-19 world.

 

Here are 5 simple ways in which Nirmata is helping customers achieve their digitization goals during this time – 

1. Optimize utilization of current cloud resources by leveraging containers and Kubernetes, to run heterogeneous workloads on shared infrastructure. 
2. Reduce cloud costs by auto-scaling underlying infrastructure based on container workloads.
3. Increase collaboration and simplify remote access by providing a single management plane that helps reduce complexity, scale Kubernetes and containers to multiple teams while keeping the costs low.
4. Manage existing and new Kubernetes environments across all distributions and infrastructure types.
5. Accelerate cloud migration with application modernization services.

 

Let’s consider an example of a mid-sized Enterprise company with a current cloud budget of $5M and an IT team that supports key business applications like supply chain management, an online shopping portal, a customer relationship management platform, and infrastructure tools.

A 12-month plan that embraces cloud-native technologies would conservatively save them 20% while preparing them to react to customer demands in the post-COVID environment.

 

Here is the math behind the business case – 

1. Cloud infrastructure savings – Optimize infrastructure cost by moving 40% of applications to containers and Kubernetes. Infrastructure savings @ 30% – $800K.
2. Cloud automation optimization savings – Optimize cloud costs further for select applications by implementing cloud burst solutions that use cloud resources only when workloads demand it. Savings @ 25% – $500K.
3. Cloud-native application management savings – Reduce Kubernetes management costs by – training key members and leveraging the Nirmata platform for workload management. Cost – $120K.
4. Modernize applications within 2 months with the Nirmata application modernization service. Cost – $60K.
5. The project yields a total savings of 22+%. 
   1. Baseline cost – $5M
   2. Total Project cost – $180K. 
   3. Total savings – $1.12M.

 

In conclusion, while COVID-19 is posing significant challenges for the Enterprises, it is also providing a window of opportunity to invest in becoming successful in the post-COVID world where customer experience, their buying decisions, and product relevance will be driven by their online experience driven by cloud-native technologies. And this applies to every facet of the business today – right from customer engagement, their buying experience, product usage, and ongoing support. 

To learn more about how Nirmata can help you, reach us.