Cloud Computing across Industries

Cloud computing is gaining grounds across industries. Not just IT but cloud computing is being extensively used in banking, hospitality, retail, ecommerce, healthcare and more industries. According to Gartner’s research, industries are viewing cloud computing as an evolving medium to succeed in the market place.
As compared to retail and ecommerce, banking and insurance are more hesitant to welcome cloud computing due to security issues. For instance, private clouds are more preferred in the insurance industry as they are considered more secure when compared with public clouds. On the other hand, in the banking sector, cloud is used for administrative functions like email and file sharing as the cloud environment might not be secure enough for banking transactions. Though security has evolved hugely in recent years in cloud computing, few industries have not accepted it with open arms due to lack of knowledge around security and well-equipped resources to manage cloud security.
While insurance and banking are reluctant to use cloud computing extensively, other industries like retail, media, ecommerce and manufacturing is using cloud as never before. In the retail industry, cloud implementations are majorly Iaas or Paas. All aspects like security, vendor maturity functions are deployed in cloud in the retail industry. Media for the obvious reasons of providing accessibility to users is exploring a cloud-based deployment to enable multiscreen entertainment. Manufacturing is massively using cloud for logistics, sales support functions, HR, product development and other manufacturing operations.



Cloud Computing in the Manufacturing IndustryManufacturing is one industry apart from IT that is making the most use of cloud computing. Let’s have a look at how cloud is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry.

• Building intelligence using analytics, applying business intelligence and reporting. The industry is using cloud platforms to capture knowledge and manage the rules.
• Using cloud to implement vendor managed inventory (VMI) and demand management applications that could give real-time order status.
• Managing sales both direct and indirect through a single cloud based platform and tracking results
• Using cloud-based platforms for marketing automation, automating customer service, support and order status
• Using cloud-based HRM solutions to manage manufacturing locations globally and more.

Thus, we see there is a shift in the approach towards cloud computing across industries. Currently, the most common question is not whether to implement cloud or not but how to implement cloud suiting the industry needs. Few of the reasons behind this major shift can be:

• Cost and space efficiency
• Security
• Accessibility and flexibility
• Business agility