SaaS (Software as a Service) and other cloud tools offer a golden opportunity for industrial leaders

to rethink and redesign their growth strategies.

 Demographic and economic factors will drive greater IT spending as manufacturers

realise the true potential of SaaS (Software as a Service) and other cloud models.
 Data potential provides opportunity to integrate existing data, and explore new data from
a whole eco-system beyond a company’s boundary, to solve business problems
throughout value chains.
 Improvement of both cloud and other digital infrastructure coverage capabilities will
expand the scope of SaaS services and bring better user experiences.
 Textile sector is a perfect example of a traditional industry which can embrace these
technologies and respond quicker to a fast-changing market.

Overview

The adoption of cloud services – the on-demand delivery of computing services over the
internet - is a huge strategic opportunity to disrupt and create value.

This article aims to trigger new thinking among manufacturing companies and will argue
that cloud models, especially SaaS, have the potential to be a great enabler for industrial
leaders in both their own sectors and across different sectors.

So what is the cloud?

The delivery of computing services - such as servers, storage, databases, analytics and
intelligence - over the cloud contrasts with the traditional approach whereby companies
invest in their own computing infrastructure and services. Using cloud services not only
reduces capex requirements, but also creates an opportunity for lower opex from
economies of scale, as well giving managers more flexibility to adapt to changing
business needs.

The chart below illustrates the range of cloud services options that can be considered.
 The improvement of both cloud and other digital infrastructure coverage capabilities
will also expand the scope of SaaS services and bring better user experiences. For
instance the development of IoT (Internet of Things) technologies and mobile internet
will significantly facilitate digitalization and help move business processes online,
enhancing the interconnection of various products and devices. This will not only
increase the necessity to adopt SaaS from a technical perspective, but also facilitate the
complete rethinking of business models with SaaS.

Big data has brought waves of disruption to industries, which has been compounding
complexities in technology adoption. Disruptions from digital transformation have
further accelerated obsolescence of existing data management architectures of
enterprises. This has increased the burden on IT teams in migrating to big data
platforms.
There has been a significant surge in the adoption of Big Data solutions within the
enterprise IT landscape. This is mainly driven by the disruptive innovation, competitive
advantage and monetization brought by the data, analytics and insights to businesses
over the past couple of years. Results obtained from big data analysis turn into valuable
inputs for other systems and applications. Organizations need to identify applications
needed to be integrated with big data solutions, so as to leverage existing processes
and applications while benefiting from the synergy.

The Cloud and The Modern Data

Architecture
A growing number of organizations are considering the following approaches
for building a modern data architecture:
 Analysis of new data streams for business benefits, which include social
media, streams, sensors, etc.
 Initiating momentous proof of concepts for big data with tangible ROI, or
moving from the pilot stage to production stage.
 Augmentation of existing data architectures via big data technologies to
realize agility, flexibility and scalability in data processing.
 Leverage of big data technologies as the foundation of new and emerging use
cases.
 Devising plans for handling varied workloads without linear increase in costs.
 Moving away from traditional software licensing and maintenance models.
 Placing greater focus on core business use cases and off load aspects like
software/hardware procurement & maintenance.
 Reducing the time-to-market to leverage early adopter advantages.

Cloud computing promises acceleration of the above in more than a few ways.
The cloud computing giants – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure,
and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – continue to see significant evolution, from
being providers of IaaS to becoming solution providers of PaaS and SaaS.
The organizations initially cloud computing platforms for compute, network
and storage services, to offload hardware provisioning and maintenance.
Their objective was inclined toward achieving elasticity to scale up and scale
down their processes based on crests and troughs in data volumes.
Cloud providers continue to leap forward with continuous innovation, providing
greater value offerings. The highest evolution of CSPs is their ability to offer
SaaS. Mapping the developments of big data analytics, leading cloud
providers are providing end-to-end services, so as to acquire, visualize,
ingest, mine, process, and deliver data to end users. This complements
organizations to take a huge leap, focusing on core business objectives and
leveraging cloud solutions for the whole data management lifecycle.
Prospects of Big Data Implementation
Seem Bright Despite Lag in Business
Adoption
Key aspects continue to hold back the adoption of big data technologies,
which include technological complexities, the imbalance between analytic
teams and big data adoption strategies, and lack of collaborative and informed
analytic culture. Despite this, prospects seem to be bullish for big data
technologies, riding on the shoulders of cloud computing, which enables
businesses to implement big data with reduced commitment of resources.
The future will see organizations banking on data harnessing as an asset and
leveraging it to their benefit. Success of businesses will be directly
proportional to their ability to mine assets of data for improving their
processes. Saying that cloud computing plays a pivotal role in facilitating data
acquisition and expedition is not an overstatement. Adoption of cloud
computing will continue to grow as a key enabler of data implementation in the
near future.