How will companies benefit from cloud services?

Cloud services promote the democratisation of technology. Today, even the smallest start-ups can afford technology that used to be available only to large corporations. Google Cloud’s Eva Fors and Telia cloud service specialist Jukka Ahtikari explain what both businesses and the public sector need cloud services for. 

“No matter whether or not you were among the first making use of new technology, that alone is not enough to make sure you remain a pioneer. Keeping pace requires continuous innovation and updating business models.” This is the message from Google Cloud’s Nordic Managing Director Eva Fors. 

Google originally hired Fors to grow partnerships and take the state-of-the-art tech company closer to the customers. At the Telia Day ONE event arranged in February 2021, Fors shared her insight on what the customers expect from companies and how cloud services can meet these expectations. 

Cloud services equal easier scalability 

“In the past, factories would have their own power plants, but now they purchase electricity as a service. The same applies to many other technologies. With easy-to-scale solutions available as a service, technology becomes more democratic”, Fors says. 

In 2020, many businesses had to downscale their operations. World Bank has estimated that in 2020, global recession will be the deepest since World War II, with the largest fraction of economies experiencing declines in per capita output since 1870*. 

"With easy-to-scale solutions available as a service, technology becomes more democratic."
- Eva Fors, Google

“Traditional business models where technology is bought are no longer sustainable. Companies want to buy only what they truly use. Orders must also be flexibly adjustable to reflect changing needs. A fresh example of this is spring 2020, when many of us suddenly had to work from home and, for example, the user volumes of collaborative applications and VPN services had to be increased heavily”, Fors says.

Telia Head of Business Digitalisation and expert in cloud services Jukka Ahtikari points out that cloud services are also part of hybrid environments. “They also increase flexibility in efficiently utilising and actively developing traditional data center services,” Ahtikari says.

Cloud services and AI improve customer service

Various cloud services are also here to help customer care agents. The trend now is automating the operation of contract centres, transferring manual, simple tasks from humans to robotic process automation. 

“Chatbots are an excellent way of automating customer care processes, but the interaction experience must be as human as possible. In addition, a working chatbot solution will identify cases that are too complex for it to handle and will seamlessly transfer the customer contact to a human. Today, artificial intelligence is an essential part of customer care. For example, the Telia ACE customer care solution uses our Google Cloud Contact Center AI technology”, Fors points out. 

Who needs cloud services?

According to Fors, the Nordic countries continue to be pioneers in using cloud technologies, as the area is home to a large number of rapid-growth companies characterised as unicorns. These agile start-ups need state-of-the-art technology for scaling their services. However, many other organisations also benefit from cloud services. 

“Google Cloud and other cloud services are beneficial to all companies with large workloads, high purchase transaction volumes or large data masses to process”, she explains.  

“Cloud services are beneficial to all companies with large workloads, high purchase transaction volumes or large data masses to process.”
- Eva Fors, Google

Ahtikari also highlights the companies’ competitiveness. “Ever-changing business environments require active change management. Together with the Telia Managed Cloud solution, cloud services enable active development and cost-efficient, continuous services – in the cloud and hybrid environments alike. This is a definite competitive advantage for the company.”

The first ones to adopt cloud services have been the financing, media, technology and carrier industries, but even the public sector has grown interested in them.

"Cloud services enable active development and cost-efficient, continuous services – in the cloud and hybrid environments alike."
- Jukka Ahtikari, Telia

“In brief, one could say that cloud services should be used by organisations that want to invest in scalability, innovation, information security and responsibility – which more or less covers all organisations, wouldn’t you agree?”, Fors sums up. 
 

*World Bank, 2020 https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/understanding-depth-2020-global-recession-5-charts