| |August 20178CIOReviewBy Tom Bressie, VP, Cloud IaaS Product Marketing, OracleThe Advent of Cloud he transformation of enterprise workloads to cloud is one of the most significant IT shifts in recent history. It is changing almost eve-rything about how businesses across industries and geographies use IT to meet their needs.In making this transition to cloud, the overwhelming majority of busi-nesses don't have the luxury of start-ing over with a cloud-first approach. They need to retain focus on serving their customers, and have invested heavily in their existing infrastruc-tures; making the move to cloud potentially quite disruptive. These businesses are seeking a clear path to run existing operations while gradu-ally moving workloads to the cloud. Circumstances are somewhat dif-ferent from the vendor perspective­Cloud service providers are shifting as quickly as possible to build solu-tions that will meet the needs of busi-nesses looking to make the move to the cloud. The new world of IT mixes cloud applications and existing, on-premises applications that interoper-ate across a hybrid network topology architected according to the needs of the business.The cloud service providers who will win in this new world of IT will be the ones who can offer flexibility and choice, and can deliver solutions that blend the new cloud model with businesses' current environ-ments according to their continually evolving needs.The migration of workloads from traditional on-premises envi-ronments to the cloud will happen gradually over time. Businesses have substantial investments in their cur-rent application portfolios that will take time to rationalize to a cloud world. Many aren't eager to scrap their existing way of operating their workloads, but are keen to realize the economic benefits that cloud has to offer. Therein lies the tension that cloud service providers need to help businesses navigate their way through. Meanwhile, cloud continues to evolve from both a business value and capabilities standpoint. Cloud service catalogs are offering more powerful and use case-specific ca-pabilities and all as infrastructure pricing continues to drop. We also continue to observe many customers looking to take advantage of new op-portunities made possible through cloud in areas including the Internet of Things (IoT), machine learning, big data, and artificial intelligence to name a few. Cloud is not only help-ing transform existing workloads, but also enabling use cases that were previously not possible with existing technologies. Staying Ahead of the Challenges Historically, the most common concerns in making the shift to cloud have been security and the governance necessary to verify the Reaping the Cloud Revolution IN MY OPINIONFounded in 1977, Oracle is an IT giant strengthened by a workforce of more 10,000 employees and has established a strong footprint in America, Europe and Asia.
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