Today’s guest post is from Liz Warren, an award-winning freelance technology writer.
British Airways has been in the news again over the summer for yet another IT failure that severely disrupted its operations.
The repeated meltdowns are costing the company millions in lost revenues and compensation — not to mention the hit to its reputation as thousands of passengers find themselves stuck in endless check-in queues, inconvenienced by delayed or diverted flights, or stranded entirely.
While BA is tight-lipped about the exact reasons for each meltdown, it’s clear its legacy on-premises infrastructure simply can’t support the kind of services consumers now expect: mobile, reliable and responsive even under high load, secure, and integrated across channels.
Modernising your IT with cloud technologies lets you create infrastructure that:
- just works. True cloud infrastructure can automatically shift workloads if a server fails, without users being aware of it. Upgrades and patches happen seamlessly and continuously in the background, with no disruption to business operations.
- automatically scales to match your needs. Built-in load balancers and autoscalers work seamlessly together to spin up new servers in seconds when you need them and shut them down when you don’t. You don’t have to provision hardware that sits idle most of the time to cope with occasional peak loads or risk your systems becoming unresponsive for both customers and your own workforce
- is more secure. Although cloud computing brings its own security challenges, Gartner estimates that, by next year, cloud workloads will experience 60% fewer security incidents than traditional data centers. With the right cloud provider, you benefit from the expertise of a large team of world-class specialists focused entirely on security and offering defence in depth, from physical security and specialised hardware in the data centre to fine-grained user access and end-to-end encryption. Cloud infrastructure providers are also generally able to take action against new threats within hours of them being discovered.
- lets you develop and deploy innovative solutions more quickly. You don’t have to spend time and effort provisioning hardware. You can also take advantage of tools in Platform-as-a-Service solutions to: easily connect to and manage data; combine existing code with new functions like geolocation or artificial intelligence; and quickly build secure and responsive mobile and web interfaces. And cloud lets you easily exploit technologies like containerisation that make it simpler and faster to not only create code but also update and deploy it.
- cuts the cost of“business as usual”. BA has been criticised for failing to invest in its IT but, like other companies with legacy infrastructure, it’s probably spending at least 70% of its IT budget just maintaining current systems. Companies that modernise their IT by moving to the cloud dramatically cut the time they spend on routine operations, letting them focus their attention and budgets on innovation and business improvement.
Moving away from trusted legacy systems might seem like a risk. But, as British Airways shows, not modernising your IT results in a far greater risk to your business success.
If you’d like to find out more, read our suggestions for 4 steps you can take to modernise and future-proof your IT with cloud computing or come and talk to the experts in Ancoris GCP team.
