Today, the cloud underpins most new technological disruptions and has proven itself during times of uncertainty with its resiliency, scalability, flexibility, and speed.

According to Gartner, Cloud adoption has expanded rapidly — more than 20% CAGR from 2020 to 2025 in total spending. But guess what — total cloud spend still makes up ‘only’ about 10% of global enterprise IT spend. So where is the barrier? What’s holding the Public Cloud penetration and pervasive usage inside enterprises?

Definitely, there are reasons like regulatory compliance, security concerns, shortage of Cloud skilled resources, technology debt, etc. My view is, so far Cloud providers have been solving the Technology Style problem instead of providing real industry-specific business process-centric solutions.

Business executives are demanding a path to digital operational excellence and most of the enterprises are looking at Public Cloud as the platform as the core foundational block for the next generation of innovation. To build a future resilient and sustainable business, companies need to prepare for a paradigm shift to industry-specific solutions as the applied innovation testing platform.

Gartner estimates that about 5% of organizations currently use an Industry cloud solution. Broader adoption within enterprises will require more vertically targeted composable applications and business processes with “whole product” solutions designed for industry scenarios and process models, rather than technology-oriented solutions that enterprises must largely configure and integrate themselves.

What makes industry clouds different from today’s cloud offerings are as follows:

1. Industry clouds offer a combination of IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and composable ISV / partner solutions to address specific vertical requirements by providing extensible design. “Composable Business” approach encourages modularity of business capabilities, teamed with autonomous operations and explicitly orchestrated workflows.
2. By leveraging composability, industry clouds can offer much-required adaptability than traditional SaaS applications thus addressing the need for customization / differentiated functionality.
3. Industry clouds are not a copy or split-off version of Public Cloud with Industry-specific or Region-specific controls that need to be maintained separately and offer the full set of capabilities to users.
4. Industry clouds are a step toward Composable Business and “whole products,” or a cloud that addresses every customer’s need.
5. Industry Cloud enables customers to connect to a vast ecosystem of partners and suppliers that offer an expansive array of services. Organizations will increasingly use Industry cloud services to create agile, innovative business designs that enhance their core competencies.

With Industry Cloud?

 Customers stand to benefit with:

1. Shared best practices and thought leadership offered through vertically specialized go-to-market and implementation partners.
2. Compliance with the infrastructure and application platform with industry-specific regulations.
3. Common Data model for analytical capabilities to mine the data from their existing applications — thus enabling Data-Driven Decision Making.
4. The industry-specific marketplace of functional applications and collections of industry-specific functional building blocks and capability to choosing a combination of the above as a (pre-) composed industry solution.
5. Value creation for enterprises by bringing together traditionally separate purchased solutions in pre-integrated solutions thus simplifying the sourcing, implementation, and integration process.
6. A primary benefit is the amount of time and effort Industry Cloud will save the businesses in designing and transitioning to cloud environments as they have been specifically tailored for them.
7. Industry Cloud can help deliver diverse customer experiences in days and not months. This means new revenue streams and greater operational efficiency and agility with higher customer connection and lifetime value.
8. Industry Cloud would pave the faster and standardized path for Cross Industry collaboration. This will also translate to new business models, services, and partnerships.

Microsoft Industry Cloud Offerings 

Microsoft is building clouds for priority industries by connecting and customizing public cloud services across firms with tailored products and service bundles.

1. Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services:Unique templates, API’s and additional industry-specific standards, along with multi-layered security and compliance coverage helps deliver differentiated customer experiences, improve employee collaboration and productivity, manage risk and modernize core systems.
2. Microsoft Cloud for Manufacturing:Businesses can connect experiences across operations, workforce, design and engineering processes, customer engagements, and the end-to-end value chain with this.
3. Microsoft Cloud for Non-profit:It connects the cloud capabilities of Microsoft to the most common non-profit scenarios such as constituent engagement, program design and delivery, volunteer management, and fundraising, all brought together by the non-profit common data model.
4. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare:It empowers the caregivers to have a holistic, 360-degree view of a patients’ care plans without having to manage multiple systems. streamline workflows, have seamless follow-ups and wellness guidance from their care teams and have a highly secure care collaboration channel.
5. Microsoft Cloud for Retail: It is designed to give retailers the flexibility to adapt the capabilities they need to address their most pressing business needs, be it knowing customers better, empowering employees, building resilient supply chains, or reimagining retail.
6. Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability: It is designed to help customers, incorporate sustainability goals into their cloud strategies by leveraging cloud providers’ environmental initiatives and advances that deliver additional business value.

Industry Clouds Make the Journey Easier

Today, every enterprise wants to create disruptive capabilities, specific to their business, that will help them stay differentiated and innovative. Industry Cloud would move the dial of the cloud conversation from a cost to a growth narrative by identifying a new area of opportunities that can be actioned. 

With Industry Cloud, Public Computing will transition to becoming the composable foundation for business innovation instead of just being a technology style for delivering applications. It will redefine the baseline for long-lasting impact on cloud strategy and adoption as they are blurring the lines between established cloud services such as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). 

Industry Cloud will empower the fast pace innovation for new business models and revenue streams for its customers. It is the required catalyst of future Cloud adoption and will accelerate the digital transformation journey.

By Gaurav Agarwaal

Keywords: Cloud, Digital Transformation, Business Strategy