Five ways to boost innovation in the cloud

The same applies to companies looking to stay ahead of the field. With new technologies constantly appearing and competitive challenger brands emerging straight out of left field, innovation is key to survival. But while many firms are aware of this, knowing what they want to achieve is a different matter. And getting it wrong can create a mess that will take more than mops and buckets to clear up.

If a company hasn’t aligned its innovation strategy against its business objectives, it may find itself wasting resources on ideas or projects that are of no value to the customer, or even counterproductive, driving operational costs up and efficiencies down.

In the worst case, the company can find itself worse off than it was before, and in a position where it’s unable to deliver the transformation that it needs to succeed.

Avoiding the one-stop shop

The prospect of digital transformation can be daunting, particularly when the clock is ticking. There will almost certainly be challenges to overcome, and it can be tempting for firms to follow the path of least resistance. A one-size-fits-all approach can seem attractive, and a number of vendors offer complete end-to-end solutions. The flipside of this is that it can lock the business in to one vendor.

Vendor lock-in isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and up until recently, would have been the preferred solution for most SMEs. But in today’s constantly evolving marketplace, flexibility and agility are fast becoming some of the most important requisites in the innovation space, and having a multi-cloud strategy allows a firm to have a “best-of-all-worlds” model. This can be difficult to achieve if a company is locked in to a cloud provider with no buyout option.

A platform for innovation

Using an enterprise-grade Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) is an option that gives an organization this freedom, allowing open-source and licensed software products to work together as fully automated, cloud-agnostic capabilities. Because the needs of every business will differ, the Capgemini Cloud Platform (CCP) helps firms boost their innovation in the cloud in five different ways.

DevOps PaaS: This allows a business to quickly , and to enable a DevOps and Agile approach to delivering services in the cloud. A DevOps PaaS gives a business vast control over how and when new features are released into production.

Integration PaaS: iPaaS allows a business to integrate any combination of cloud-based and on-premises applications as part of an evolving hybrid cloud environment. This allows an organization to orchestrate its services so that they work seamlessly together as a coordinated whole.

API Management PaaS: API adoption is a vital aspect of innovation for many companies, and an API Management PaaS simplifies the centralized publishing, advertising, and governance of APIs to unlock the data held within a business for use in innovative business services. This also allows a firm to securely expose its APIs for partners and customers to consume

Container PaaS: A containerized runtime environment supporting microservices, monoliths, synchronous, asynchronous, and batch integrations, and cloud-native applications.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) PaaS: In the GDPR era, central administration for identity and access management (IAM) across an organization greatly aids compliance. By identifying and authenticating users at every touch point, it not only puts a business in control of their digital experience, it allows it to manage everyone’s data seamlessly in the cloud.

The mighty enabler

The ability to build things quicker and better is at the heart of innovation, and Capgemini’s Cloud Platform PaaSs are powerful enablers in this respect. Everything that you need is available on tap and it’s all fully automatable.

A good example is the adoption of APIs. As these become ever more ubiquitous, the pressure is on to adopt them and harness their power. Capgemini’s Cloud Platform API Management provides a mess-free solution, providing you with the tutorials and guidance to build exactly what they need without starting from scratch. You can then exploit the power of APIs by using Capgemini’s Cloud Platform to provide an entire lifecycle management feature. From building cloud-native apps to integrating processes and data, APIs can form the fabric of your IT.

Capgemini’s Cloud Platform provides standardization to the way your cloud operates and builds products and services, which means you can control your costs far more effectively and create new offerings efficiently. And you stay fully in control – you can take ownership of a managed PaaS from Capgemini with our unique no lock-in buyout option.

The efficiency dividend

Capgemini works closely with its customers, providing strategic advice that ensures that you are constantly measuring your innovation achievements against measurable business objectives. The cloud is only a means to an end –  it allows those objectives to fail fast or to scale up successes quickly.

Diamonds can be efficiently made today without pressure or mess, and the same applies to innovation. Efficiency sparks innovation, making it simpler to create new tools, products and services. It’s important to remember that innovation isn’t simply just about coming up with diamond ideas, it’s also about successfully implementing them.

For more information, download the Capgemini Cloud Platform brochure
https://www.capgemini.com/resources/capgemini-cloud-platform-brochure/