Industry Clouds Become Catalyst for Transformation

An industry cloud ecosystem can unlock the potential of data residing within the enterprise and thereby accelerate innovation not just for a single business but for an entire industry.

Industry clouds are uniquely positioned to accelerate cloud adoption, because they appeal directly to the needs of business users and provide industry-specific features and benefits that companies have found lacking in commodity clouds. While industry clouds are more complex and require more effort in terms of integration and management than commodity versions, the potential payoff they offer in terms of agility, flexibility, cost savings, and increased innovation is so high that they are poised to inevitably become an essential element in most companies’ cloud strategy.

This Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report focuses on the continued evolution of the cloud and the often discussed yet seldom truly defined rise of industry cloud. The stories demonstrate how the combination of industry cloud and a strong cloud strategy can help even the most risk adverse businesses in highly regulated industries obtain the assurances they need to embrace cloud, become cloud-native enterprises and drive business value.

Some key dimensions of the report are:

• The emergence of industry clouds- how companies in energy, financial services, retailing, and other sectors are gaining critical business benefits through them
• The obstacles that leading companies have encountered in adopting industry clouds
• The steps taken to mitigate the obstacles to successfully develop flexible, dynamic, agile, and customized industry clouds that have enhanced business outcomes