How many plates can you spin?

As the world around us accelerates, the cloud helps us keep pace, achieve more, and focus on the future

If you ask a typical project manager how their day is going, more often than not they will draw the analogy of a circus plate-spinning act — where a performer runs back and forth in an increasingly frantic manner — trying to prevent plates falling to the floor. During the final moments before the inevitable loss of a perfectly good dinner service, strategy devolves into “just in time” disaster prevention. It’s a great analogy because it illustrates the finite resource in the situation — the human.

We are clever, we are resourceful, we are adaptable, and we learn from our mistakes. Unfortunately, we are not always focused on the task at hand, we are not consistent, we get tired, and we make mistakes.

Wouldn’t it be good if an army of robots could be enlisted to spin the plates — who are perhaps terrible at anything else, but single-mindedly brilliant at the task they have been designed for. Relentless, consistent, unwavering, and untiring. Imagine also if their number could be multiplied at the turn of a dial.

Welcome to the Cloud.

Who, what, when and where

Over the last twenty years, automated business process management solutions have come of age — leveraging the key differentiators of machines to help in our everyday work. Machines never sleep, never get tired, never forget, and never make mistakes within the remit of the job they have been designed to do. We can therefore take advantage of them to assist with repetitive, predictable, and onerous tasks. Computers don’t see “complex” — they only see “more”, and they have no problem with that.

In recent years technologies such as Microsoft Power Automate, Nintex Workflow Cloud, and K2 Five have proliferated — lowering the barrier to entry for teams wanting to design and develop automated business process management solutions. Where workflow solutions were previously restricted to the realm of software developers, they are now accessible to power users and business consultants through the use of low-code and no-code design environments.

The arrival of the cloud

The “cloud” has transformed information technology strategies — with subscription pricing models removing crippling initial investment costs in hardware and software, and providing agility through rapid infrastructure deployment and on-demand scalability. Businesses have been transformed by the opportunity to rapidly deliver solutions, and gather live analytical data across processes, roles, and people. Mobile devices connected to the cloud have transformed the mobility of both data and people — with perhaps no better illustration than the migration of workforces during the pandemic.

Let’s take a look at areas where cloud infrastructure has had the greatest impact:

Low initial investment

Cloud services use subscription charging models — which lower the barrier to entry, and reduce risk exposure when developing or prototyping transformative solutions. It’s important to note that subscription costs for a service or solution encompass far more than traditional hardware investment or software licenses — the subscription includes maintenance, technical support, and future evolution of the platforms, technologies, and software underpinning delivered services.

Scalability on demand

The capacity to process, store, and manipulate data in the cloud is often termed “elastic”. This means the infrastructure you call upon to service your solutions can be scaled in response to demand — either dynamically, or according to parameters or limits you set. On-demand scalability works both ways — when workloads are high, capacity can be dynamically increased to meet demand — and when workloads reduce, capacity can be drawn back with no cost to the business of dormant unused infrastructure.

Enhanced insight

Cloud services provide a wide range of performance analysis services — enhancing the ability of the organisation to gather, integrate, analyse, and present insights into working practices, workloads, bottlenecks, and stress throughout the organisation. Data gathered from disparate systems can be combined and mined for key performance indicators and meaningful metrics — presented as live charts, graphs, and dashboards for architects, designers, and decision-makers.

Improved reliability

The delivery of a service in the cloud is divorced from the implementation of the service. Data and file storage is co-located, backed up, backed by redundant hardware, and health checked transparently to solutions that deliver or consume it. Services processing data can also be dynamically expanded to meet demand — avoiding bottlenecks and or caps that might cause operational instability.

Increased agility

Due to the subscription nature of cloud services, and the speed with which infrastructure can be provisioned and torn down, the operational and financial risk involved in prototyping and testing solutions is reduced enormously. The net result of the increased speed and reduced risk is an improvement in the agility of the organisation as a whole — with no more “big bets” on the future and therefore less emphasis on costly long-term planning.

Reduced maintenance requirement

One of the most powerful differentiators between on-premises infrastructure, and the delivery of cloud services is the reduction of maintenance and depreciation costs. The hardware involved in delivering cloud solutions is abstracted from the point of delivery — which benefits both service providers and customers. Underlying software platforms are maintained, updated, upgraded, and backed up transparently of their consumption.

Improved mobility

For “the cloud” to proliferate, the world needed to embrace open standards in terms of protocols and data formats — enabling machines to interoperate seamlessly with each other. The most visible outcome of this standardisation has been the emergence of mobile devices, and the ability of staff to continue their work from diverse locations. The evolution of responsive design, and its influence on user interface frameworks such as Fluent, Bootstrap, REACT, and Angular has unshackled solutions from desktop computers and reduced the cost of delivering applications across multiple devices and platforms.

Strengthened security

While organisations incorporate a wide array of systems and services in delivered solutions, the evolution of single sign-on, claims-based, multi-factor, and application authentication has created a secure ecosystem that is strong, stable, easy to manage, and resistant to attack.

Cloud providers like Microsoft are adopting international standards such as ISO 27018 to protect personally identifiable information and to locate data securely in geographically local data centres. Solutions such as Azure and SharePoint go the extra mile — encrypting stored files not only in transit, but also at rest — using best practice techniques, with continually-audited procedures and infrastructure.

Future sustainability

One of the most important by-products of moving services to the cloud is a result of the resource sharing employed by cloud infrastructure. Hardware used to service cloud platforms is shared on a huge scale — leading to less energy use, fewer emissions, less waste in terms of obsolete hardware, and less manpower required to service brick-and-mortar infrastructure.

Unlocking the future

As workloads increase, we are forced to reassess how we spend time. Time is finite. The time we spend can be thought of as an investment, where we choose what we invest it in. Leveraging technology in the cloud to reduce our workload releases time to explore how we do things, where we are going, and how we get there. It’s about unlocking the future.

Jonathan Beckett works as a technical consultant for Deltascheme, a digital transformation specialist based in the United Kingdom. In recent years he has specialised in workflow, form design, and business process automation solutions, working with clients across a wide range of industry sectors.