Five key questions for retail when migrating to our clouds

    What questions would retailers like X5 Retail Group, Open, Auchan, and others ask when moving to Cloud4Y?



    Tough times have come for retailers. The habits of customers and their Wishlist have changed over the past decade. Online competitors are about to step on the tail.

    Generation Z buyers want a simple and functional profile to receive customized offers from stores and brands. They use different devices and access points, and often are no longer eager to communicate with staff, as grandmothers burned, visiting the good old markets.

    In order to somehow adapt to the time, retailers should raise their heads from the old approaches and pay attention to the clouds.

    Taking advantage of their advantages, you can deliver an adequate user experience.
    Retail leaders have been present on the market for centuries, experiencing recessions and fashion changes, but have not yet encountered crises like today.

    For example, in one of the civilized countries of the West, 14 shops are closed every day.
    Inevitably need to develop.

    Unfortunately, many retailers are being held back by dilapidated infrastructure, old legacy systems, not to mention the sysadmin, a director’s friend sitting on a big salary.
    Legacy often slows down progress, but for some systems, programmers are already dying out, and new ones will be better studied by some Go, rather than conditional Cobol.

    On the other hand, sectors such as the financial one powerfully invest in IT at 7% of revenue, emphasizing the fundamental importance of being on the cutting edge of technology. Sparing money for such investments means losses for the retailer.

    Now in sales it is important to use all the capabilities of IT infrastructure. Amazon Go will come to Russia sooner or later. Do we want him to dare with his arrival our dear Pyaterochka with the old and good aunt Klava at the checkout as Yandex dared the local taxi drivers?
    The decision to deploy IT operations in the cloud can be complex and needs the blessing of business owners.

    And it is important for them to know the answers to all their questions. So, what questions should retailers ask before migrating to Cloud4Y?

    First question


    How much money will we raise on this?

    Nearly two-thirds of retailers say that migration will not pay off. They need to look at this in more detail from the point of view of long-term investments. To think that migration to the cloud will add to their business and what pains will eliminate.

    In today's retail, clouds offer significant cost savings. The possibility of mass scaling and the ability to throw off at least part of the capital costs of infrastructure, tuning with the mouse, and not a team of loaders - all this is very cool and saves a lot of time, nerves and money in the moment.

    Businesses are experiencing an increase in revenue from taking out data storage, computing, and other services to outsource through the pay-as-you-go model to the clouds pretty quickly.

    Golovnyak with capital costs, expensive licenses, software and database support, infrastructure and SUDDEN scaling ends where the cloud service begins.

    The main thing is for the director to assess the potential losses from the fact that the company will be left behind and the benefits from breaking ahead:

    • The cost of data transfer is not comparable with the cost of updating the fleet of half-dead ancient servers.
    • Although the growth in the amount of data in the cloud can last quite a while, in the cloud you can precisely configure exactly the space and resources that are needed right now, whether it's a hype on Black Friday or New Year's Eve.
    • The cost of service changes especially when it comes to internal management. Using the cloud, you pay only for what you received in fact. No expenses for the supply, relocation, execution-dismissal of employees. All this is included in the cost of cloud services and it is much cheaper.

    The capabilities of the cloud are vast, but you need a reliable company that will tell you how to get the most out of them. Today's century is a century when efficiency is achieved through narrow specialization. Professionals at their job are the key to general well-being.

    Second question


    What applications and data will we start with?

    More than a fifth of retailers have already transferred data and calculations to the clouds. The rest have already outlined their backlog and monetary losses. Although some older software is still difficult to drag, expanding resources also leads to improved performance.

    Auto-scaling resources and performance in the cloud can result in benefits for used applications that can distribute the load across multiple servers.

    Cloud orchestration tools can be tailored to monitor and dynamically scale in accordance with current requirements and without the participation of people.

    It makes sense to start the migration with applications that were originally designed for clouds. A gradual migration strategy may be suitable for shabby applications as this approach will allow you to make a minimum of changes to the code.

    Just remember that there is no rush and no need to transfer everything at once and instantly. Conduct a thorough analysis of the workload, determine what to focus on, and then use it as a roadmap to squeeze the maximum profit from the transition to the cloud.

    Third question


    How to track resources?

    Unlike the bearded way to store data on a static server, the cloud is dynamic and cunning. Auto resources and elasticity mean that anyone in your office can take on how much is needed in the moment. There are also a number of special accounts for business units with resources provided in advance.

    Ease of deployment creates some organizational risks. Security organization, limited access to resources, cost overruns due to resource redundancy and changes for software compatibility.

    To avoid all of this, retailers should consider operational and control models that would monitor running applications and make adjustments when there is a shortage or oversupply of resources. Without such monitoring, there is a risk of burying money on applications that will go awry running. It is also better to analyze bills for used applications. All this can be automated, of course.

    Resource management is vital during migration, as each unused resource eats up money and undermines real savings.

    Our experts will help to resolve all such issues for the benefit of any business.

    Fourth question


    How do we protect the environment?

    Transferring applications and data to the cloud does not mean taking responsibility from the owners of this data. Retailers carry it in relation to the personal data of their customers.

    Since the release of GDPR in May 2018, all organizations have an additional obligation to meet a certain level of requirements. Data leaks are very critical since it is necessary to keep them legally in front of the relevant law enforcement agencies. The reputational loss of the cloud provider in such episodes could threaten the closure of the business. This makes us provide the highest possible level.

    Leaders of cloud providers provide robust physical servers protected through a virtualization layer. With our army of engineers, supporting you and your data is a settled issue.
    No cloud provider can guarantee 100%, because This is the area and your responsibility as the owner of the information. Nevertheless, we help to migrate and configure everything so as to achieve the maximum level of protection.

    Malicious software has become invisible. Many have access to it and can carry out an attack. The availability of ecosystems for cyber attacks allows any shkolota to join the spread of viruses.



    Hacking is not what it was before.

    If at the dawn only geek enthusiasts did this, then today's bandits are well motivated financially. As a rule, they work from organized crime groups or governments such as some kind of North Korea.

    The business went online, grabbing money there. Cybercriminals, although they cannot break into the data centers or the kapertka of your system administrator, are able to gain control over the employee’s account.

    For example, Petya has hit 2,000 businesses in 65 countries, blocking users of its own ecosystems.

    More than 9,000 infected files are detected per day, and 700 virus families are constantly working. Initially, ransomware viruses like WannaCry and Petya did not have a specific purpose. Cybercriminals have changed tactics and are now aiming at the weak points of their targets.

    Almost all businesses today use clouds, especially in the west. This allows shareholders to have access to company information from anywhere, even from a mobile phone on a safari in Africa. Security issues in some cases are not as strict as in Cloud4Y, and this can lead to security risks.

    To break into the cloud network, it’s enough to access an employee’s email or computer by sending a fake email with a malicious link. If an employee clicks on it, consider what is missing.

    Achilles heel are smartphones and IoT. To simplify, companies give employees access to important information from personal phones. The quantitative growth of personal devices has raised risks. Cyber-attackers can track the passwords that employees enter when they log in from smartphones or tablets. The Internet of things is also growing with a security gap. Sometimes decisions are simply unsafe written by crooked coders.

    In the future, even more cybercrimes are expected with a big fat. Crypto-jacking attacks using other people's computers to book crypto-mines will require CPU power and scalability of cloud services. But many organizations don’t care.

    Attacks on mobile devices will become more frequent. But there they will not use narrowly targeted viruses, but combines. And when Skynet is filed, and he takes over organizations, hackers will attack him to gain the power of artificial intelligence. Gaining control of the IoT will be easier. It will become one of the weaknesses that are most difficult to protect.

    Moreover, the authorities of the European Union and Russia are rolling out new laws on personal data and their protection. This means that organizations will not be able to protect data and will be forced to make it publicly available.

    Fifth question


    How will we answer for your leadership if it all profitsapit?

    Dragging data into the cloud, you get your risks. Without normal managers, you can lose everything, given that another top manager may accidentally lose his phone on which he logged in. The human factor remains on your conscience.

    A prudent and suitable administrative policy and operational model refers to the standards that are set by cloud trends. Given the dynamic nature of the clouds, the traditional management approach is too slow. Some kind of automation is needed, old approaches need to be updated.

    Retail in Russia is about to grow, using available technologies to compete with the chances of winning. In Innopolis, boutiques without cash desks and staff are already testing. Are you daring? We are talking about a lot of tools, the benefits of which you can appreciate right now on Cloud4Y.ru

    Also popular now: