What $2.4B in Cloud Investment Looks Like

After recognizing the compute power of cloud and the early stages of success, there are new tipping points that can truly transform business. The magic of the cloud lies not in the cost savings, but in efficiencies and future innovations that are possible. Gartner reports that by 2022, 90% of data and analytics innovation will require public cloud services for support. In addition, 90% of enterprise digital firms will deploy a hybrid approach within the next two years.

To address these points, Atos is investing $2.4 billion within the next half-decade to help businesses navigate not only the cornerstones of cloud, but also the nuances that are shaping enterprise data and applications.

The Atos OneCloud initiative is an industry-first venture to make consulting and application transformation expertise accessible to businesses looking for leading-edge, secure and decarbonized digital solutions.

Jason Ruge, a partner at Maven Wave, an Atos company, explains how digital leaders plan to rewrite the industry playbook on the legacy-to-cloud transformation — for themselves and businesses — enabling agile operations that are rooted in analytics across public, private and hybrid environments.

Why the $2.4 billion push?

The Blockbuster-Netflix disruption model doesn’t only apply to consumer companies, but also to every type of business. Ruge says that cloud can create new business models in 18-24 months, displacing others that have been around for 100 years. “If you aren’t changing your business, someone will come along and leverage the cloud in a way that puts you on your heels, and possibly, out of business,” he says.

Disruption isn’t exclusive to startups and cloud-native businesses, it’s an essential ingredient to success in global organizations. Atos OneCloud demonstrates that it’s important to champion change from the inside out — just as it drives change for customers. Evolution isn’t a weight to be held only on the shoulders of businesses; it is a responsibility to every innovator and integrator of scale.

Ruge says: “Atos OneCloud is a coordinated effort across all 105,000 employees to drive industry and geography alignment with three primary goals. First is the alignment to a common set of cloud solution offerings and technologies, based on the demand we hear from our customers. This includes investing in the build out of additional cloud accelerators. Second is to deeply invest in the expansion of the cloud knowledge, skills, and certifications of our current employees. Third, we are always looking to blend resources and expertise into Atos through impactful cloud-focused acquisitions. Combining these efforts together, we are fully committed to becoming an ever more important driver of cloud-focused, digital transformation for our clients.”

Prioritizing innovation

Cloud computing has until recently been driven primarily by either the lifting and shifting of an enterprise organization’s on-prem workloads to public cloud or by a digital-native  company leveraging the full power of the cloud to help reinvent industries. However, Atos’ enterprise clients now demand a focus on innovation and the power of the cloud to transform. “Now we are fully modernizing and containerizing applications, focusing on data analytics, machine learning and AI along with our existing leadership in cloud technology, cybersecurity and high-performance computing,” says Ruge.

But what makes such a comprehensive approach feasible? The answer is a rich heritage of customer collaboration and data ascendency.

Ruge says: “As a digital business innovator, Atos already has a tremendously strong data organization that includes massive data warehouse management capabilities, public cloud migration proficiency, and AI/ML implementation competence. We have consistently partnered with our clients in managing their legacy platforms and possess the right expertise to repurpose the data and run AI/ML on top to look for new possibilities.”

Making innovation sustainable

In an era marked by the dual imperatives to transform and be sustainable, digital business innovators are helping enterprise companies achieve the balance at scale. Companies that intend to be productive on the cloud and benefit tangibly from its promising growth opportunities can explore turnkey solutions like Atos OneCloud as a strategic enabler to stay ahead in the game – sustainably. 

“I don’t know another digital business innovator whose commitment to decarbonization reflects that of Atos,” Ruge says. “We believe that decarbonization is critical to success in North America and across Europe, where the regulations are already in place. We are aiming to help our customers to be profitable while being compliant.

“Atos OneCloud is designed to smoothly move companies and governments from their on-prem, potentially heavy carbon footprint environments to the cloud, facilitating offsets in the process.”

Transformation at any stage

The initiative details a unique set of offerings in a powerful one-stop shop. But what this really does is ensure enterprise businesses aren’t left behind in a competitive market, no matter their stage in cloud transformation. 

“A unique attribute about Atos is that we can work with the customers at any stage of the journey, and we have such a great heritage of working with customers in managing their operations and their infrastructure today,” Ruge says. “We also have just as strong of an ability to work on the very bleeding edge of digital transformation and build out capabilities natively on the cloud, and we can do everything in between.”