Introduction

Into the cloud, what's next ...

So your company is (re)considering the cloud or already exploiting cloud services in various shapes. But what’s next? Are we all working in the cave over a few years ?

Most of us have already embraced the cloud both personal and professional. By now we all have become metaphorical cloud consumers and with the rising of the “Internet of things” (IoT) we expose ourselves to the data miners of this era while we enjoy the cued offers.

Whatever the next years will bring, it will be disruptive and it will bring acceleration to change. So, we better come prepared to any kind of evolution within the way we do business. The same accounts for the way we live as who would have thought our lives would have been affected by a small electronic handheld device which allows us to connect wherever we are. Some of us are native digital and some are not, but we are all subject to an accelerating evolution.

The cloud era does not allow any respite to analyse and look back how we did. We need to look forward and prepare for technology driven markets. Whatever you implement today needs to be prepared for what you are doing next year. There are so many samples of business who failed to embrace and collapsed.

Being able to adopt and adjust to market shifts, change of business models and take risks is nothing new but it’s the increasing pace of disruptive changes which requires a clear vision and significant resilience to excel and survive.

So how about Salesforce and being flexible to adopt, scale and support the new wave while the commodity business generates the revenue to sustain. Adding complexity to your business systems also adds complexity to making changes as you need to support your commodity business. It’s like toss juggling and new balls are added with shorter intervals.

Moving into the cloud emerged data generation as never before. Generating, handling and managing all data while taking care of regulations, quality, complexity and security is challenging.

So this is exactly what the PSPG framework is all about. It's a framework helping you to prepare. It's like the door handle. You know the purpose of a door, you know what it does, you even use it .....  by using the handle ....

Have great fun exploring the framework and I hope you personally or your business benefits from it.

Salesforce like any other platform will change as we all change and everything surrounding us is changing constantly. We should embrace these changes as these brought us to the lives we currently live.

Changes are certain as we need them to reach our full potential both in private and professional. This means we should embrace changes and refer to changes as real opportunities. Managing changes is all about managing opportunities and taking care of the risks involved. The salesforce platform is all about opportunities and reaching goals.

Why cloud? Core benefits.

Understanding why organisations move to the cloud is part of understanding why Salesforce, as a cloud-first platform, operates the way it does. These benefits are relevant context for every PSPG practitioner.

Efficiency. Cloud computing efficiency starts with economy of scale. Large cloud service providers deliver and maintain services at a lower cost per unit, passing that efficiency on to their customers. There is also a time-to-deliver advantage — there is often no delay when scaling capacity or purchasing adjacent services.

Flexibility & Scalability. Cloud computing services allow organisations to scale up or down based on actual business demand, without upfront capital investment. Accessing a system whenever you need it, from wherever you are, on whatever device — is now the baseline expectation.

Business Continuity. Organisations traditionally carry the full cost of business continuity and disaster recovery infrastructure, much of which sits idle. Cloud providers absorb this complexity, managing redundancy, failover and service degradation on behalf of their customers.

Software Updates. Traditional upgrades involve hardware, licenses, service outage planning, testing and lost productivity. Cloud providers deploy updates with minimal or no service degradation, increasing update frequency and shortening the time to deliver new functionality.

Costs. Cloud computing transforms capital expenditure into operational expenditure. There is no longer a need to invest in hardware, perpetual licenses or duplicate infrastructure. Idle equipment is eliminated, power costs are reduced, and consumption scales on a pay-as-you-go basis.

Collaboration & Productivity. Cloud computing enables collaboration by allowing employees, partners and customers to share, track and co-author information simultaneously from any location. Collaboration is a known accelerator for productivity — it connects people and enables them to share knowledge and insights.

Competitiveness. The cloud grants smaller organisations access to enterprise-class technology that would otherwise be out of reach. Acting faster than larger, established competitors becomes a viable strategy when the same tools are accessible to all.