The cloud-first, mobile-first enterprise

Mobile and cloud are the two biggest enterprise trends over the last ten years - and there exists a huge synergy between them. It is not surprising that that many companies are successfully adopting a cloud-first, mobile-first strategy, but what does that actually entail?

Large enterprises are moving from private, on-premises clouds to a hybrid model, where applications can run on internal infrastructure or in the location that is most appropriate, given the constraints of policy, compliance, and resources. Alongside the growth in cloud has been the phenomenon of BYOD, enabling employees to work whenever and wherever they need to, and the burgeoning use of mobile technologies to manage business processes. Support for this capability is no longer optional; it is expected.

So cloud and mobile are in lockstep, and enterprises must consider them when evaluating any new initiative, leading to a cloud-first, mobile-first strategic mindset. The goal is to have cloud's ubiquity enhance the productivity benefits of the mobile employee, partner, or customer.

Cloud / mobile synergies

Mobility is the key to business growth, and it enables many next-generation business processes. It delivers the ability to use location-awareness, to access address books, and to push notifications, driving analytic techniques on that data to understand customer or employee behaviour, and develop new, relevant products and services. It also lets companies leverage the ubiquity of mobile technologies to enhance communications and collaboration, and hence productivity.

One example of a mobile-first, cloud-first company is Netflix. It has become one of the most popular video streaming providers, and runs its systems almost entirely in the public cloud, adopting cloud standards and open source tools. At the same time, it embraces the value of mobility and ensures that, no matter where you are or what device you are using, you can access its products and services. Cloud technologies ensure that content is served to customers as quickly and as efficiently as feasible.

A strategy of cloud-first, mobile-first offers the benefits of ubiquity, enhanced productivity, and improved agility. Critically, it also boosts standout, and in a world of me-too, differentiation is everything.