Public Cloud: Real-World Lessons of Strategic Success

The public cloud is fast becoming a strategic tool for companies opting for IaaS over running workloads on premises. IT leaders share their experiences and lend advice to CIOs migrating to public cloud services to drive innovation, agility and revenue growth.

Public cloud services are evolving from cost-cutting technologies to enablers of business agility. More than a way to cease operating data centers, the public cloud affords CIOs the ability to focus on more strategic projects — namely, digital transformations aimed at boosting the bottom line.

Whether that means building a mobile app or analyzing data to strengthen customer engagement, these shifts signal how strategic the public cloud has become. But CIOs also view the cloud as a way to build software faster by embracing agile, DevOps and design-thinking philosophies. Fueled by these technology trends, the global public cloud market will grow at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate this year to $178 billion, according to Forrester Research.