Integrated Cloud Service: The Changing Face of Retail

By CIOReview | Wednesday, February 20, 2019

In this competitive market, the need for shifting to becoming a technology-based enterprise has become essential for every business. The retailers are confronting with the necessity of delivering better customer experience, and to keep pace with the time they have to move to technology. Today, customers want a precise and fast service. The retailers have to maintain an up-to-date and centralized database, based on the previous purchases and preferences of the customers. Hybrid cloud has become important in this process. Being an integrated cloud service, hybrid cloud enables an organization to provide better flexibility and more data deployment options.

Hybrid cloud has enabled the retailers to render some crucial changes, from business process to supply chain. They have also become able to measure customer experience and KPIs. This reliance has become important because it provides the opportunity of experimentation with new business models through the deployment of applications keeping the previous infrastructure intact. MarketsandMarkets has predicted that the retail cloud market will be worth $28.53 billion by 2021. The shift to the hybrid cloud can reduce the IT expenditure also. For e-commerce, the hybrid cloud has a massive role to play. Leveraging hybrid clouds retailers can cut short the risks of data theft and data manipulation. E-commerce sector has to pay attention to the changing interest and demand of a customer. To address this ever-shifting interest, the e-commerce sector relies on the hybrid cloud because it facilitates the process of making the change in the digital platform.

Hybrid cloud provides better control on IT expenditure, but the cloud waste hampers the action of an organization. The lack of IT expertise can become a problem to adopt hybrid cloud, and the question of security also peeps in. But, keeping these shortcomings aside, the hybrid cloud provides retailers with an opportunity to offer a personalized experience to the customers. While shifting to a hybrid cloud, the retailers have to stay aware of its diversified aspects. Otherwise, their endeavor can turn into failure.