Today, business leaders must have eyes in the back of their heads. They have to look ahead to stay on top of the latest technologies that give their businesses a competitive edge and drive ROI, while keeping an eye on operations and managing talent.
What’s more, ignoring the latest trends and innovations in tech can spell disaster for a company. Keeping outdated tech often has security implications like creating a route of easy access for hackers. In order to stay a step ahead on security, your business must stay up to date.
Cloud platforms are top of the list for critical business technologies.
With that in mind, Udacity is excited to introduce the newest executive program — Cloud Computing for Business Leaders Executive Program. This program is designed to give executives a technical understanding on cloud computing on a high level so they are best equipped to make tough, IT-driven decisions.
Cloud Computing for Business Leaders Executive Program Details
The Cloud Computing for Business Leaders Executive Program will prepare you to identify business units ready for cloud optimization, understand where cloud-based solutions are the best strategy, recognize industry standards for cloud solutions and develop implementation strategies focused on security and governance.
In as little as two months (at five – 10 hours a week), students who enroll in the Cloud Computing for Business Leaders Executive Program will learn how to recognize the benefits of cloud computing, prepare their organizations for transitioning to the cloud, design strategies to maximize ROI while minimizing risk.
Capstone Project: Cloud Strategy for Retail
Propose a cloud strategy for a company in the retail sector based on artifacts including company background, org charts, financial information about data centers, and email exchanges detailing business challenges, opportunities, and company culture. With just this information (and knowledge gained from the course), students will build a cloud strategy that addresses business problems, maximizes ROI, and keeps security and governance front-and-center.
Learn From Business Leaders in Cloud Computing
To develop this program’s world-class curriculum, we collaborated with professionals from top-rated tech companies. Each collaborator contributed guidance and feedback to focus the program on the most in-demand skills. And, the instructor — Sanjay Agrawal — has extensive cloud computing, business leadership and teaching experience.
Instructor Bio
Sanjay Agrawal has over 20 years of experience with companies such as AWS, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems building engineering teams, defining products, founding new businesses, and advising CxOs of large enterprises to adopt new technology. He co-founded TropoScale LLC, a cloud consulting and advisory firm, to help enterprises innovate with cloud.
Why Cloud Computing is Critical for Modern Business Leaders
If your company hasn’t already migrated to the cloud, it’s time to move, and you’re in charge of initiating the change. This list will help you understand why moving to the cloud is so important, and it will give you resources for preparing your team for the task.
1. Companies Adopted Cloud Technology at an Astonishing Rate
Today, most businesses operate in the cloud. In fact, 85% of businesses around the world are already using the cloud for storage, and 67% of companies use cloud infrastructure as of this year according to TechJury.
And those numbers are only growing. Cisco predicted that by 2021, 95% of data center traffic will be from the cloud.
2. COVID Accelerated Adoption of Cloud Computing and Remote Access
When COVID-19 swept the globe and closed many workspaces for the foreseeable future, many companies chose to open up the ability for employees to work from home.
Many workers see this as a benefit and are less-than-eager to return to an office. Even when some offices reopen, working remotely is here to stay, regardless of a vaccine. In fact, a Gartner survey found that 74% of companies plan to be fully remote, even post-COVID-19.
With non-cloud-based systems, devices need to be hard-wired into networks to access sensitive technology. While this used to work great in the past, it makes remote work virtually impossible. With cloud computing, company data can be securely made available to workers — no matter if they’re in the office, at home, or on the beach in Hawaii.
3. Prioritize Scalability With the Cloud
In normal data centers, scaling is time-consuming, costly, and requires significant work from IT. The team must add in new hardware devices, configure them, and integrate them into the current system. If any hardware breaks or needs an upgrade, you can expect a huge time suck.
By shifting your infrastructure to the cloud, scaling or upgrading equipment for speed is as easy as changing your cloud subscription.
Not to mention, many systems are configured to dynamically scale based on your use. If you own your own data center, your machines may sit there being underutilized until there’s a peak in traffic. With cloud computing, you don’t need to worry about the upkeep or availability of machines. Whatever you need is ready to work for you.
4. Significant Cost Savings by Moving to the Cloud
Cost reduction is also reported to be a huge motivator for moving to the cloud. According to Forbes, the SVP of Engineering of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure stated that “customers are typically saving 30%-50% overall by moving their applications to our cloud.”
Since cloud platforms work by offering cloud computing as a service, they can afford to have large fleets of data centers and machines available to best manage multiple clients’ resources.
When a resource isn’t being used by one company, they can instead redirect it to another company. Resources never sit around idle just in case of one company’s potential need for scalability.
If you operate your own data center, odds are, many resources are being wasted.
5. Cloud Technologies Offer Increased Security
The cloud is widely considered to be more secure. According to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) consulting firm Privo, a cloud-based service, like AWS, can be more secure than on-premise computing because of enterprise encryption and security, third-party monitoring and maintenance, secure direct connections to the cloud, and built for compliance.
Not only are cloud platforms on the cutting-edge of technology (which helps them to stay at least one step ahead of hackers, bad actors, and purely human mistakes), they’ve also worked hard to implement strict security standards.
Cloud platforms often go through security audits and monitoring to ensure their customers that their security is solid. On top of audits and monitors, cloud providers have worked hard to enact identity management, data access rules, and encryption standards that potentially are leagues ahead of where legacy systems are.
In fact, Salesforce reports that 94% of businesses saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud.
Enroll in the Cloud Computing for Business Leaders Executive Program
If you’re a business leader or executive who is interested in learning more about cloud computing, this course is for you. Upgrading your organization to cloud solutions is critical in this day and age—not just for security and governance, but also for scalability and getting ahead of the competition.
With Udacity’s combination of hands-on project-centric learning and mentorship, there’s no better way to meet the demand than by registering today for the Cloud Computing for Business Leaders Executive Program. Enroll now to learn more!
