| |APRIL 20229The most significant way in which cloud impacts manufacturers is by enabling innovation and promoting the adoption of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologiesdata security, interoperability, and vendor lock-in. These concerns are compounded when you consider the length and breadth of the manufacturing value chain and the number of stakeholders within the ecosystem ­ all using disparate applications and data formats. Also, the terabytes of transactional and operational data generated daily require tamper-proof storage and must be easily retrievable. CIOs and Chief Digital Officers may worry about the latency while processing high-volume transactions and mining data in the cloud. This concern is especially genuine because manufacturers have relied on on-premise infrastructure and highly-customized monolithic ERP applications for decades, and there might be significant organizational inertia while making a move to the cloud. There is also the hesitation of being dependent on a single cloud provider for resource provisioning and technology enhancements.Most of those concerns can be alleviated by recognizing the advancement in cloud technology. While the first phase of cloudification may involve the migration of non-critical workloads to the cloud, the real benefits can only be experienced by going cloud-native. That means that companies need to build and run applications on the cloud and adopt DevOps and cloud-native architectures to drive continuous improvements and enhance application performance. Further, CIOs and Chief Digital Officers can also optimize their cloud costs and reduce vendor lock-in by using cloud solutions from multiple providers and picking the best that each vendor has to offer. And based on their risk appetite and specific business requirements, they may choose the most appropriate cloud deployment model ­ public, private, or hybrid ­ each providing different levels of flexibility, customizability, and control. Adopting cloud solutions and unlocking their real value would necessitate manufacturing CIOs and Chief Digital Officers to focus on building a robust API strategy. The execution of this strategy would promote interoperability, deploy proven integration middleware for operating a multi-cloud environment, and bolstering data security processes and governance processes. HOW IS CLOUD HELPING REALIZE MANUFACTURING 4.0?Early adopters and innovators in the manufacturing space are beginning to witness the transformational benefits of the cloud. The most significant way in which cloud impacts manufacturers is by enabling innovation and promoting the adoption of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) technologies. Cloud allows IT teams to quickly provision infrastructure, build proofs of concept, showcase the business value of novel solutions, and move those to production seamlessly leveraging the superior scalability of the cloud. With on-premise infrastructure, gaining access to resources would be a time-consuming, costly, and often bureaucratic process. Long story short, adoption of the cloud strategy is democratizing innovation. Moreover, in a highly globalized business environment, the cloud provides the necessary tools for collaboration, allowing developers from any geography to participate in digitalization projects. As more and more companies embrace cloud technology, legacy on-shore applications will be replaced with cloud-native applications tightly integrated with rapidly evolving technologies ­ such as machine learning, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and data analytics. That will pave the way for ERPs to transform from `tools for efficiency' to `tools for strategic decision making'.
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