Running a modern-day enterprise can be an expensive affair, and with the cost of doing business continually rising, chief information officers (CIOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) are looking for ways to reduce the TCO (total cost of ownership) for their digital investments. While there are multiple ways to do this, many C-level executives have saved money through cost-effective cloud solutions that also improve operational efficiency and help automate processes.
Counting the cost
The total cost of ownership is the price of daily operations combined with services and products. It is used for evaluating projects and decision-making by measuring the cost-reward ratio. According to a research by McKinsey, many businesses are migrating to the cloud to capture savings -- with as much as US$3 trillion of cloud value available to businesses. Before the business can make the shift to the cloud, however, they must understand the cost and capabilities of the migration.
For businesses to stay profitable, it is imperative to keep technology costs in check. As such, it is up to the CIOs and CTOs to identify and streamline processes to reduce TCO and save more money for the enterprise. Here are some achievable ways C-level executives can do this in 2023.
Automating your way to savings
Success comes from consistency. Modern businesses that apply automation to their processes enjoy the consistency of that well-oiled process. This is especially true of mission-critical applications that may have a domino effect. Automation minimises the risk of disruption and helps reduce the cost of labor. It also lets businesses reallocate resources to other more profitable areas.
See also: Keys to achieving human-centred automation testing
Additionally, automation also helps accelerate application development and deployment. One cost driver for organisations is the data pipeline, and the efficiency of this can be greatly improved through automation. Many organizations have done this to advance DevOps capabilities while enjoying the benefits of lower TCO.
Optimising Processes
CIOs and CTOs who are looking to reduce the organisational TCO will find relief in more efficient processes. This is achieved by reducing the amount of steps in a process, automation and simply by improving interdepartmental communications. A collaborative process can help C-level executives maintain the organisation's high standards and keep quality consistent throughout operations.
See also: Human element still important for effective mass communication
The move to the cloud will enable the business to reexamine current processes, eliminate duplication and rethink new and effective process alternatives towards increasing operational efficiency. The use of data has also enabled businesses to utilise data-driven decisions to add value to tasks and eliminate bottlenecks. Ultimately, the business will be able to communicate better with stakeholders, enhance change management strategies and implement ideas better with more accurate outcome measurement.
The race to the cloud
The shift to the cloud has enabled businesses to focus on what they do best. Instead of conducting time-consuming activities on databases, businesses can free their IT teams to prioritize tasks with revenue-generation potentials such as application development, fixes and innovations. In fact, 80% of Asia Pacific businesses surveyed by Deloitte said that their cloud implementation has better prepared them to face future challenges and address current needs. Seven out of ten respondents said the cloud also enabled their business to scale and be agile like never before. Not only has this reduced TCO, but increased profitability, an essential feature in this ultra-competitive marketplace.
Performance, flexibility and efficiency have become the new priorities for businesses looking to migrate to the cloud. Moving from traditional RDBMS (Relational Database Management System) to Cloud NoSQL platforms also means better data flexibility. This is important to businesses with applications that need to pivot, scale and update quickly according to changing consumer behaviour.
- Multimodal capabilities bring all the benefits of polyglot persistence, without the disadvantages of it. Essentially it does this by supporting a document store (JSON documents), a key/value store and other data storage models (multiple databases) into one database engine that has a common query language and a single API for further access.
- Multimodal also supports multiple data models within a single, integrated backend.
These benefits have empowered Couchbase customers to reduce cloud spending and optimise their infrastructure efficiencies. CTO at Maccabi Health Care, one of Couchbase’ customers mentioned: "We wanted a solution that seamlessly works across server and mobile, and that the developers could use without lots of retraining. None of the other solutions came even close to Couchbase’s broad enterprise capabilities.”
Stuart Fisher is the regional vice president for Asia Pacific and Japan at Couchbase
