The Cloud Drives Faster Time-to-Market for Innovative Businesses

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation, pushing companies to rethink how they use technology to better serve customers and gain a competitive edge. Many IT leaders are now focused on leveraging the cloud to rapidly deliver innovative digital solutions.

The Need for Speed in Today's Business Landscape

Recent research shows that 90% of technology leaders fear being displaced by more nimble competitors if they fail to sustain a high pace of digital innovation.

To thrive in this environment, businesses must find ways to quickly ideate, build, and launch new products and features that solve customer problems. Lengthy hardware procurement and legacy systems can slow time-to-market. The cloud provides the speed and flexibility needed to stay ahead.

For example, the average large enterprise takes around 9 months just to procure new hardware. By moving to the cloud, teams can provision infrastructure on-demand in minutes, avoiding long wait times. Legacy systems often require extensive modifications to add new capabilities. With cloud-native development, businesses can take an API-first approach to easily integrate innovative features faster.

The stakes are high, as 94% of technology executives say speed is critical to seizing new revenue opportunities. Cloud computing delivers the agility to continuously experiment, gather user feedback, and deliver iterative releases rather than monolithic projects. This fail-fast approach gets working software in customers' hands faster.

Cloud Computing Accelerates Time-to-Market in 10 Key Ways

Here are 10 key advantages of cloud computing for accelerating go-to-market

Number	Advantage
1	Faster Resource Provisioning
2	Quick Access to GTM Functionality
3	Continuous Delivery of New Technologies
4	Easier System Configuration and Updates
5	Transition from CAPEX to OPEX
6	Elasticity to Meet Changing Demands
7	Reduced Customer Downtime
8	Automating Tasks to Focus on GTM
9	Enhanced Collaboration Across Teams
10	Streamlined Security and Compliance

1. Faster Resource Provisioning

• Cloud infrastructure can be spun up on demand, removing delays from hardware acquisition and configuration. Teams can get to work faster.
• For example, AWS offers over 200 cloud services that can be deployed in minutes, without procurement delays. This enables faster prototyping and testing of new ideas.
• Developers can instantly provision testing and staging environments to match production, accelerating software delivery.

2. Quick Access to GTM Functionality

• SaaS tools easily integrate with cloud platforms, providing important go-to-market capabilities without custom software development.
• Solutions like Salesforce CRM provide pre-built functionality for sales, marketing, customer service, and more to support getting offerings to market quickly.
• Pre-integrated AppExchange solutions extend platforms with AI, automation, and cutting-edge innovations.

3. Continuous Delivery of New Technologies

• Cloud providers rapidly deliver the latest tech innovations. Companies that use the cloud gain access to cutting-edge capabilities to build and deliver products quickly.
• For example, AWS launched over 1,800 new services and features in 2020, innovating at a rapid pace. Azure added over 100 services and capabilities in the past year.
• This innovation velocity means development teams can take advantage of the newest technologies for AI, machine learning, IoT, blockchain, quantum computing, and more to create differentiated offerings.

4. Easier System Configuration and Updates

• The cloud simplifies continuous integration and delivery, enabling faster iteration and release of new features.
• Cloud-native, microservices architectures make it easier to update specific parts of applications without affecting other components. This supports faster feature development.
• Infrastructure as code and policy-driven automation streamline system changes and reconfiguration to accelerate development cycles.

5. The Transition from CAPEX to OPEX

• Moving from upfront capital expenditures to pay-as-you-go cloud billing provides more flexibility to fund new innovations.
• With no need for major hardware investments, companies can redirect capital to developing new products, entering new markets, hiring talent, and other growth initiatives.
• Usage-based billing allows cloud costs to be aligned closely with business demand. Resources can scale up and down based on needs.

6. Elasticity to Meet Changing Demands

• Cloud architectures easily scale computing resources up or down to accommodate fluctuations in usage and demand. This minimizes delays.
• Auto-scaling compute, storage, and network capacity keeps applications performant during traffic spikes, avoiding downtime that disrupts delivery schedules.
• Developers don't have to over-provision resources upfront. The cloud allows right-sizing capacity just in time to support growth.

7. Reduced Customer Downtime

• By auto-scaling resources, the cloud helps minimize outages that disrupt customers and sidetrack staff from production.
• Built-in resiliency features like availability zones and auto-recovery reduce the likelihood of downtime events affecting product availability.
• Disaster recovery capabilities make it faster to restore services following incidents, minimizing delays for customers.

8. Automating Tasks to Focus on GTM

• Easy cloud automation frees IT teams from mundane support tasks so they can focus on strategic initiatives that drive faster time-to-market.
• Automated provisioning, deployment, monitoring, and remediation reduces the workload for IT staff, allowing them to dedicate more time to innovation.
• Chatbots and virtual agents can handle many simple support requests, while AI augments human capabilities for more complex tasks.

9. Enhanced Collaboration Across Teams

• The cloud facilitates seamless collaboration between distributed teams working on new products and entering new markets that drive faster time-to-market.
• Built-in tools like video conferencing, file sharing, task management, and wikis connect team members to ideate, develop, and release offerings rapidly.
• Cross-functional agile teams can easily coordinate and deliver smaller, more frequent releases for faster customer feedback.

10. Streamlined Security and Compliance

• Robust cloud security and governance solutions help companies rapidly meet regulatory requirements for launching new products.
• Cloud providers offer a wide array of security controls, policies, and tools to help safeguard applications and data with minimal configuration.
• Compliance automation reduces the effort to meet standards like HIPAA, PCI, and SOC 2 that are often required before releasing new offerings.

Realize the Strategic Advantages of Cloud Computing

To leverage the cloud's advantages for accelerating time-to-market, companies need an effective cloud strategy. Consult with cloud experts  who can help assess your needs, architect optimal solutions, and ensure a successful implementation. With the right strategy, the cloud can help drive business growth through faster delivery of innovative offerings.

Here are some best practices for capitalizing on the cloud's time-to-market benefits:

• Take an API-first approach to integrate capabilities from multiple cloud services into cohesive solutions quickly. Standardized APIs make it easy to combine complementary functionalities across platforms.
• Implement DevOps processes and automation to streamline software delivery. With infrastructure as code, continuous integration/delivery, and automated testing, teams can release updates faster and more reliably.
• Adopt agile development methods to deliver working software faster through rapid iteration and cross-functional collaboration. The cloud's flexibility supports iterative releases.
• Leverage PaaS capabilities to accelerate building cloud-native apps. PaaS provides pre-built components to quickly develop, deploy, scale, and manage modern applications.
• Analyze cloud usage data and metrics to optimize application architectures and resource consumption for peak performance and cost efficiency.
• Train staff on cloud technologies and methodologies to unlock innovation. A cloud-skilled team gets the most from advanced capabilities to build and deliver offerings quickly.
• Take a mobile-first approach to designing solutions that provide value to customers anytime, anywhere, on any device. The cloud allows mobile apps to be delivered at a scale that drives faster time-to-market.

With a sound strategy, companies can harness the cloud to rapidly develop and launch innovative solutions before competitors. This accelerates time-to-value in serving customers with products that meet their evolving needs. A cloud foundation is critical for digital businesses looking to thrive today.