Analytics in the Cloud
Analytics is a quickly evolving field and solution providers need to continually innovate to meet customer demands with the ever-expanding volume of data being ingested. Since the 1990s, management in the Information Technology field has carried the accountability of ensuring core business operations are transitioned to processes that are technologically managed. Mostly in the last decade, these assets are now moving from hardware resources and software installations that are physically on the organization’s premise, to compute servers that are secured and updated by cloud service providers inside of data centers all over the world (Harvey, 2017).
As data and applications move to the cloud, analytic platforms and solutions are following right behind. The central benefits of cloud analytics can be divided into the following seven categories: Improve decision making, improve planning and forecasting, provide a single source of data, improve speed and efficiency, allow for agility, lower costs, embrace scalability, and monitor user satisfaction (Harvey, 2017).
Background on Cloud Computing
As of 2019, the market share of the global cloud industry is more than $210 billion, and 2022 projections are estimated at around $331 billion (“Gartner Forecasts”, 2019). The servers and software solutions available from cloud service providers allow businesses to pay for computational utilization as they use these assets. This revolution in the IT model provides organizations with increased flexibility, speed, security, and potential decreases in overall IT spend (Buyya, Ramamohanarao, Leckie, Calheiros, Dastjerdi, & Versteeg, 2015). Flexibility can be attained by gaining the capability to change from one software stack to another without a substantial effect on the business or IT.
For example, if a particularly designed architecture doesn’t meet consumer needs, pivoting to a new cloud architecture can be accomplished without having to replace hardware or terminate licensing agreements. Speed comes from the capability for a business to provision or stop a server or a software solution within a matter of a few minutes. Lastly, cost decreases come from the lower total cost of ownership of the IT systems. Companies can pay-as-they-use cloud resources, rather than paying significant upfront investment costs toward equipment and labor resources.
IT Support
Prior to any new cloud analytics or workloads, there needs to be an IT Strategy in place for the organization which provides a roadmap and guidelines. This strategy defines how IT can shift to the cloud and becomes the primary starting block for any organization (Hayles, 2013). The strategy is broken into: a portfolio assessment of existing infrastructure would analyze the current state, meetings assist gathering requirements for the future state design, model and outline the steps to reach all milestones, and provide a reliable lifecycle to manage. Lastly, auditing and monitoring the new cloud deployments require IT performance management processes in place.
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