Your customers might not realise how much the cloud does for them. If they're sending emails from the office, catching up on TV at home, or taking photos on their phones, they'll be using the cloud, and might not even know it. No wonder, then, that when it comes to recognising its potential for their businesses, it can be hard to know where to start.
But, as part of the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), the cloud can do so much for us. In education, government, finance, and beyond, it's using data to change the ways we live and work. Your customers have more information at their fingertips than ever, and they can use it to do great things. In the words of the World Economic Forum, the 4IR and the cloud have "the potential to raise income levels and improve the quality of life." It's something worth understanding.
But what does the cloud do?
Cloud computing is easy to define, but can prove difficult to understand. And that's why your customers may let its potential slip out of their reach. After all, in the 4IR, the cloud is doing so much.
Let's take a look at a few sectors your customers might operate in, and a few ideas for showing them how the cloud can work in their businesses. Remember: these are just ideas to help you get them excited, and give them a taste of what's possible.
Making the cloud work
Education operates under massive financial and resource constraints. And that goes double for its IT departments. Customers here want a partner that can take the weight off their shoulders by closing the skills gap between busy administrators and their tech. Add a cloud suite like Office 365, and you're giving everyone a wide range of apps to use, and taking away the stress of managing them all.
Customers in government want a better way to serve the public. And the UK's Cloud First policy is a step towards bringing all those services together under one banner. A government-certified cloud platform like Azure can do just that, to help agencies get new apps and services out to the public quickly, and respond to new demands as they come up.
For financial services, hanging on to and protecting data is essential. With so many rules to stick to, and upcoming legislation like GDPR, your customers here may be unsure about moving to the cloud. But with services like Dynamics 365, data is always under your customers' control. The cloud makes it easier to manage and report, and backs data up with a high level of durability.
Tapping the potential
Global weather company AccuWeather is tapping the potential of the cloud to improve the quality of life for 1.5 billion people around the world. And it's using Microsoft Azure and Dynamics 365 to do it.
People rely on AccuWeather to warn them of weather conditions and keep them safe. That's why it gets 17 billion data requests every day. And it needs to store, analyse, and send out that data quickly and accurately. Now, with the cloud and the 4IR, that information can be sent to customised apps for mobile, online, and social media. Since moving to the cloud, AccuWeather has been able to warn people of everything from tornados to blizzards. Here, the 4IR is quite literally saving lives.
Open for business
There's not much the cloud can't help your customers do. And there's not much it won't work with. But they need a partner like you to show them. Adopting a cloud service like Azure doesn't tie your customers down to using Microsoft products to build on top of it. The point of this service is its possibilities. And as we've seen, it can help customers in every sector realise their potential.