Businesses are constantly striving to create seamless, personalised and engaging interactions across all touchpoints. Here’s where cloud consulting steps in, acting as a powerful catalyst for crafting exceptional customer experiences by strategically utilising cloud technologies.

The Cloud Consulting Steps: A Catalyst for Exceptional Customer Experiences

Scalability and flexibility

Cloud consulting ensures that businesses can scale their infrastructure to match the demand of their customers. So, even at the peak times, a business’s services and offerings  remain smooth and responsive. This ensures that customers have a positive experience. For instance, consider an online retailer who anticipates a sudden surge in traffic during the Christmas shopping season. Thanks to strategic planning by cloud consultants, the retailer’s cloud infrastructure is designed to automatically adjust and allocate resources in response to increased traffic. Customers today expect a consistent brand experience across all channels – website, mobile app, social media and in-person interactions. Cloud consulting facilitates the integration of diverse systems, which help businesses to create a unified customer profile and deliver seamless omnichannel engagement. Take for example, a customer seamlessly switching between online research and in-store assistance. This has become much simpler because all their information is readily available across the different channels. Consultants are also highly adept at designing cloud solutions that can change with evolving needs of the business or the preferences of its customers. These adaptable solutions can be implemented quickly whenever necessary in the form of services and features.

Data management and analytics

Cloud consultants can use data analytics tools to provide deeper insights about customer preferences and behaviour. With such information, businesses are in a better place to tailor their communications and services to match customer expectations. Let’s take an example of a streaming service that uses cloud-based analytics tools set up by cloud consultants to analyse viewing patterns and preferences. This data allows the service to tailor recommendations for each user, suggesting shows and movies that align closely with their tastes.

Improved reliability

Cloud consultants build resilient systems that minimise downtime and ensure rapid recovery in case of disruptions. For example, consider the case of a restaurant that uses cloud-based systems for taking reservations, managing orders, and processing payments. A cloud consultant can ensure that the system is designed to withstand various disruptions, from minor technical glitches to major outages. The consultant can also implement a disaster recovery plan that includes regular backups of the restaurant’s data, such as menu information, customer details, and transaction histories.

Agile development and innovation

The cloud fosters rapid development cycles. Cloud consulting partners help businesses adopt agile development methodologies. This ensures that the business is able to quickly develop, test and iterate on new features and functionalities based on customer feedback. The increased agility is vital to stay ahead of the curve and deliver innovative solutions that meet evolving customer expectations. This is why around 96% of companies are now using at least one public cloud. 

Improving security

Cloud consultants ensure that businesses adhere to strict data security and regulatory compliance standards. They help implement advanced security measures such as strong encryption for data storage and transfer, ensuring that sensitive customer information is protected from unauthorised access. For instance, for a health tech startup, cloud consultants ensure that all systems comply with specific regulations such as HIPAA. They conduct regular audits to identify security risks and assist in creating policies for handling and protecting customer data effectively. This not only builds customer trust but also enhances the overall customer experience.

Strategic approach to cloud consulting

While technology is critical, successful customer experience transformation requires a strategic approach.  Here’s how cloud consulting partners act as more than just technology experts:

• Understanding customer journey: They collaborate with businesses to map the entire customer journey, while also identifying touchpoints and potential areas for improvement.
• Developing a customer experience strategy: They assist in crafting a tailored customer experience strategy aligned with the business’s goals and customer needs. This strategy outlines specific technologies, processes and KPIs for measuring success.
• Change management and adoption: Cloud consulting goes beyond just deploying technology. Partners help manage organisational change, which ensure employee buy-in and adoption of new cloud-based tools. It also helps to improve processes that specifically improve the customer experience.

 Rapyder as a trusted cloud consulting partner?

Explore the cloud consulting services from Rapyder. The company is a reliable AWS Advanced Consulting Partner and AWS Migration Success Partner. Rapyder received the prestigious AWS Consulting Partner for the year 2021 award, which further cemented the team’s expertise and service quality within the industry. 

The company is headquartered in Bengaluru, with additional sales and support offices in Delhi and Mumbai. As a trusted partner, the cloud consulting partner can make your cloud journey seamless and cost-effective. The comprehensive suite of services help businesses optimise their cloud operations effectively.

The company has 460+ happy clients from a diverse range of industries, including healthcare, gaming, fintech, edtech, media and entertainment, manufacturing and much more. The AI-driven migration process ensures minimal disruption to existing operations. So, you can transition from your legacy applications without experiencing major downtimes. 

The team of cloud experts provides a valuable Free Cost Assessment service. By analysing your organisation’s infrastructure in detail, the company offers tailored recommendations on the best cloud types, providers and resource allocations to fit your budget and support your business’s growth.

The cloud consulting partner also offers Free Cloud Consultation services. Rapyder excels at helping businesses streamline their IT resources, reduce costs and maintain strict standards of reliability, security and performance.

This initiative helps your business evaluate its cloud setup and clarify IT objectives, leading to a well-defined migration strategy that ensures a smooth transition. To know more, contact Rapyder.

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The important role of AWS consulting partners 

To fully leverage AWS’s capabilities, it’s important to understand and effectively use its numerous offerings. This is where AWS consulting partners come into play. These partners are essential in helping businesses navigate the vast landscape of AWS services. Here’s how they make a difference:

1. Expertise and Guidance

With their understanding of a myriad of resources, they’re always up-to-date with the latest trends and necessary innovations. Their advice will help you stay ahead of the curve and achieve success. For instance, if you are running a startup, you’re already juggling countless responsibilities. On top of that, the complexities of cloud computing can be daunting.

AWS consultants can simplify these complexities by:

• Providing On-demand Expertise: Whenever you hit a technological snag or need advice on best practices, AWS consultants can troubleshoot issues or offer strategic insights. This ensures that all your cloud activity can continue without considerable delays. 
• Security and Compliance Assurance: They ensure that your cloud infrastructure complies with industry regulations and is secure against potential threats. This is particularly important for startups that might lack in-house security expertise.
• Tailored Cloud Strategy Development: A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in the cloud. Consulting partners bring in-depth knowledge of the entire AWS ecosystem, which helps them to recommend the most suitable services for a business’s specific needs. This might involve selecting the right combination of storage, compute, database, security, and analytics services – all orchestrated to deliver optimal performance.

 2. Time and Effort Savings

AWS consultants can make managing your cloud systems easier and save your team a lot of time. They can automate routine tasks such as backups, software updates, and adjusting your setup to handle more or less traffic. This not only cuts down on your team’s workload but also helps prevent mistakes. These experts can also set up the AWS system right from the start, ensuring everything works well with your business needs and saving you the hassle of making changes later. Plus, they know all about the different services by AWS and can point you to the most suitable options. AWS consultants also use advanced monitoring tools to keep an eye on your systems all the time. This means they can spot and fix problems before they turn into bigger issues.

3. Reduced Costs and Increased Efficiency: 

A survey revealed that businesses are ready to increase their cloud spendings and, for 34% of the respondents, the primary motive behind this was the possibility of drastic reduction in the total cost of ownership. Expert guidance ensures optimal utilisation of AWS resources, which can lead to cost savings and a more efficient cloud environment. Partners can help identify and eliminate inefficiencies. This ensures optimised resource allocation and overall cloud spending. Migrating to AWS can result in cost savings of up to 66% related to storage costs, networking and more. When going through a cloud consulting agency for this migration, they can ensure that the cost savings is maximised.  

4. Seamless Cloud Transformation

As your business expands, your technological requirements will naturally evolve. Meeting the changing demands of your customers and staying up-to-date with technological innovations can be quite challenging. That’s where your AWS consulting partner comes into play. They help you smoothly integrate new technologies into your existing operations at just the right moment. This kind of seamless transition is important because it allows your business to adapt without disruption. The right AWS partner can keep your business flexible and ahead of the curve.

5. Migration and Ongoing Support:  

Around 44% of traditional small businesses and 74% of enterprises have already migrated to using cloud infrastructure or hosting. This migration to the cloud can be a complex process. Consulting partners possess the technical expertise and experience to ensure a smooth and efficient transition, while minimising downtime and disruption.  They handle the technical intricacies, which help businesses to focus on their core operations. However, the support does not end there. Partners offer ongoing assistance to address technical challenges and troubleshoot issues. They also provide training to internal teams on effectively using AWS services for their specific needs.

By working with AWS consulting partners, your business does more than just grow—it excels. They can help optimise your operations, improve efficiency, and boost productivity. 

Looking for information on AWS consulting services?

Explore our cloud consulting services. Our experts specialise in creating cloud strategies that align closely with your business goals. They start by evaluating your current IT infrastructure and crafting a customised plan for quick and efficient cloud integration. Our service goes beyond standard consulting; we act as your committed partner in digital transformation. With our certified cloud consultants, tested methodologies, and steadfast dedication, we provide solutions specifically designed to meet your unique business needs.

Rapyder empowers businesses with a comprehensive suite of AWS solutions. From ensuring seamless access to applications with end-user computing to crafting targeted customer engagement strategies with Amazon Pinpoint, the company has expertise over diverse aspects. 

Rapyder Cloud Consulting Capabilities:

• Consulting on Single or Multi-Cloud Strategies
• Managed Cloud Services
• Application Development, Customization, and Migration
• Design and Development of Cloud Architecture
• Digital Transformation and Modernization of Apps and Data

In 2021, Rapyder was awarded with the prestigious AWS Consulting Partner award. The following year, the company received the AWS Migration Success Partner award. In 2023, Rapyder also achieved the coveted Amazon Web Services Managed Service Provider (AWS MSP) status. This status confirms that the company is capable of handling and providing full lifecycle cloud support to its clients throughout their journey.

Over the years, Rapyder has made significant strides in several industries, such as fintech, edtech, manufacturing, healthcare, gaming, retail and media. The services offered and quality of expertise has led to the company having more than 460 satisfied clients.   

To know more about our offerings and expertise, contact us. 

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Generative AI chatbots are capable of engaging in text-based dialogues with users, comprehending the input from users, and producing responses that are pertinent to the context.

Looking ahead, we can anticipate ongoing progress in the realm of generative chatbots. This includes enhancements in multitasking capabilities, advancements in emotional intelligence, and a rise in the application of generative AI within virtual and augmented reality settings.

What is a Generative AI Chatbot?

A Generative AI Chatbot, or Gen AI Chatbot, is an advanced form of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can generate human-like text based on the input it receives. Unlike rule-based chatbots that are programmed with predefined responses, Gen AI Chatbots use machine learning algorithms to understand context, learn from past interactions, and generate responses.

Fact time: 80% of customers who have used chatbots report the experience as positive.

How Do Gen AI Chatbots Work?

Generative AI chatbots, trained on large text datasets, use Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to understand and generate responses. They consider conversation history for context, generate text based on learned patterns, and refine responses for coherence. They learn iteratively, improve over time, and are guided by ethical norms to ensure safety and privacy.

A Look at their Key Characteristics:

1. Natural Language Interpretation (NLI): Generative AI chatbots are endowed with NLU capabilities. This means they can decipher the semantics and context of user messages, paving the way for responses that are more akin to human conversation and contextually appropriate.

2. Text Generation: Unlike traditional chatbots that depend solely on pre-set or rule-based responses, generative AI chatbots have the ability to generate text responses. This feature allows them to engage in dynamic and unbounded conversations.

3. Data Training: Generative AI chatbots undergo training on comprehensive datasets that encompass text from a variety of sources. This training enables them to master grammar, syntax, and a broad spectrum of topics, thereby enhancing their versatility in conversations.

4. Context Retention: These chatbots possess the capability to retain context across multiple conversation turns. This results in more coherent and context-sensitive responses, even in intricate dialogues.

5. Applications: The use of generative AI chatbots extends across numerous sectors, such as customer service, content creation, virtual assistance, education, healthcare, and many more. Their adaptability makes them a valuable asset in diverse fields.

6. Customization: Many organizations have the option to tailor these chatbots to match their brand voice and specific use cases. This can include training them on data specific to their domain, ensuring a more personalized user experience.

7. Advancements: The technology underpinning generative AI chatbots is constantly evolving. Newer versions and models are continually being developed, offering enhanced performance and capabilities.

Benefits of a Gen AI Chatbot for Organizations

1. 24/7 Availability: In the digital age, businesses need to be available round the clock. AI-powered chatbots offer constant support, adapt to complex queries, and deliver precise solutions, enhancing customer satisfaction and building trust.

2. Cost Efficiency: Chatbots automate routine tasks, freeing up customer support teams and reducing operational costs. They offer the same level of service as a 24/7 customer support model but at a fraction of the cost. Industries like retail, banking, and healthcare can save up to $11 billion annually through chatbot adoption.

3. Proactive Customer Engagement: AI chatbots anticipate customer needs and engage them proactively. They offer personalized and intuitive interactions, ensuring customers feel attended to from their first interaction. This proactive approach helps businesses stay top-of-mind and fosters a sense of care and attentiveness, strengthening brand loyalty.

4. Easier Checkout Processes: AI chatbots streamline the checkout process in the digital marketplace, where over 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. They provide a simplified, conversational checkout experience, transforming potential drop-offs into conversions and enhancing customer satisfaction.

5. Better Consumer Insights: AI chatbots serve as a tool for gathering consumer insights, helping to refine marketing and product strategies. They accumulate valuable consumer data during each interaction, revealing preferences, feedback, and behavioural patterns. This data helps businesses uncover patterns and themes, allowing them to refine their offerings and develop consumer-centric strategies. The dialogue with customers becomes a strategic tool, fine-tuning the business with each interaction.

Rapyder as your Partner

Rapyder, a frontrunner in cloud services and next-gen AI solutions, is dedicated to providing a secure and robust cloud infrastructure. With a focus on scalability and reliability, Rapyder

facilitates the smooth integration of AI tools. By choosing Rapyder as a partner, organizations can enhance their customer support capabilities and prepare for the future. For organizations looking to implement tailored chatbot solutions, our expertise and commitment to innovation, makes Rapyder your ideal choice.

Conclusion

Generative AI Chatbots are transforming customer service in 2024. As AI technology continues to evolve, we can expect Gen AI Chatbots to play an even more significant role in customer service in the future. Get in touch with us today for a customized Gen AI Chatbot solution.

The post The Future is Now: A Comprehensive Look at Generative AI Chatbots in 2024 appeared first on Rapyder.

Amazon Web Services is one of the most popular on-demand cloud computing platforms. Due to its popularity, AWS grew exponentially and now has an active user base of over 1,000,000. In addition to its setup, Amazon has launched its AWS Managed Services Partners program. The program aims to ensure that each of its customers has a dedicated manager to tend to all their needs through Amazon partner companies.

AWS Managed Services Partners are located globally, powering users with the right cloud solutions and helping them set up and manage their cloud infrastructure.

For example, a travel provider reduced their average disruption time from 10 days in a business year (approx. 97% SLA) to 52 minutes (approx. 99.99% SLA). The AWS partner managed their cloud infrastructure services to help them achieve a 99.99% service availability. (Read this Case Study)

But despite the many advantages, many users cannot visualize who these partners are and why they need a managed services partner. And those who do are unsure how to choose the right AWS Managed Services Partners who will truly understand their business goals.

In this article, we will talk about Managed Services Partners. From what it is, why you need them to help you with all your distinct cloud requirements, and how you can choose the right AWS consulting partner for your business, we got it all covered.

Who are AWS Managed Services Partners?

Simply put, AWS partner companies or, as commonly called, managed service providers (MSP) are third-party service providers. They are responsible for daily handling your IT infrastructure and/or end-user systems on the cloud platform. This is typically done on a proactive basis and a subscription model.

An AWS consulting partner is an MSP that fulfills the stringent requirements of Amazon Web Services to make the service provider highly reliable.

AWS Managed Services Partners are expected to remain informed of every new trend and the latest features of a cloud platform. They have detailed industry knowledge, giving users an in-depth understanding of leveraging the technology to achieve their goals and providing consultation.

Today, 83% of businesses have moved to a cloud platform from a traditional hosting service. And as the numbers increase, hiring an experienced AWS partner can help make the transition a seamless experience.

AWS Managed Services Partners are committed to following three key principles:

1. Instead of just being a service provider that handles service requests as they come in, partners build a relationship with the user as a trusted advisor. While providing consulting and advisory services, AWS partner companies also educate their customers.
2. To establish themselves as industry experts and help their customers make the most out of the cloud, an AWS advanced consulting partner continually works with specialists to train their in-house talent to strengthen their industry knowledge further.
3. AWS premier partners advocate using cloud services proactively and how customers can do more with the cloud. Amazon partner companies make it a point to educate their customers on how AWS isn’t just an operating system but can also solve their application-level requirements.

Why Choose An AWS Managed Services Partner?

AWS has robust features – multiple service types, custom API, and a comprehensive pricing model. Hiring an in-house talent to research and understand AWS and its ecosystem specifically and build and manage your cloud environment can be expensive and time-consuming.

Furthermore, with the cloud infrastructure continually evolving to fit new business requirements, training the in-house talent is also important. This doesn’t just make staying on top of these changes difficult and adds to the cost of managing the cloud infrastructure.
Instead, businesses are better off hiring AWS Managed Services Partners who can manage your cloud system and dedicate time to handling your requirements.

An AWS premium partner manages your cloud infrastructure – from migration to management, allowing you to focus on the business. Since the AWS advanced consulting partner is solely focused on the cloud infrastructure, it also becomes easier for them to remain current with the latest industry changes. This enables them to inform you about the best features your business can leverage.

In addition to industry knowledge, an AWS consulting partner will ensure that your cloud infrastructure is always well-optimized. They monitor cloud usage and performance on a day-to-day basis to ensure all your processes perform well. At the same time, an AWS premium partner will equip your infrastructure with all the security requirements. So as their customer, you don’t have to set aside an additional amount to secure your cloud platform. You can rely on them for it!

But all the above benefits come when you choose the right AWS Managed Services Partners.

Choosing the Right AWS Managed Services Partner

It’s important to pick the right service provider for your cloud computing needs. A verified and reliable AWS consulting partner will be informed of the latest industry changes and will be known to prioritize timely support and cloud monitoring. They should focus on closely monitoring your cloud infrastructure to ensure your systems run smoothly.

So when picking AWS Managed Services Partners, you should go beyond just reading their reviews and ratings. Get on a call with them to understand if they can fulfill your business needs, help you achieve your business goals, and suit your resources.

An AWS consulting partner will take the time to explain the product to you. They will also help you visualize how every feature benefits your business, helping you make an informed decision.

We at Rapyder are AWS Advanced partners, providing premium Consulting services. We ensure businesses don’t have to look too far for their changing cloud computing needs. Right from quick, reliable, and secure migration to AWS to helping businesses re-engineer their AWS infrastructure, our end-to-end services and expert technical account managers take care of it all. All while you focus on one thing – building and growing your business.

We know that shifting to AWS can be overwhelming. That’s why we work with you closely to build and manage your infrastructure on the cloud, keeping your spending optimized for maximum returns. Our customers trust us for complete project management.

Are you looking for a reliable Amazon Web Services plan custom-made to your business and its cloud computing requirements? Rapyder is a trusted Managed Services Partner, powering multiple businesses with cost-effective and high-performing cloud platforms. With real-time updates and instant support, Rapyder provides adaptable, secure, and innovative cloud computing solutions for your business.

Get a free cloud consultation from our experts here at Rapyder.

To get the latest insights, research and expert articles on AWS Services, Cloud Migration, DevOps and other technologies, subscribe to our Blog Newsletter here. For AWS Case studies and success stories, visit Case Study Section

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What is DevOps?

DevOps combines cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increase an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products faster than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes. This speed enables organizations to serve customers better and compete more effectively in the market.

AWS provides flexible services designed to enable companies to more rapidly and reliably build and deliver products using AWS and DevOps practices. These services simplify provisioning and managing infrastructure, deploying application code, automating software release processes, and monitoring your application and infrastructure performance.

Is DevOps Right for You?

The average organization adopting DevOps sees a 20 percent improvement in time-to-market, a 22 percent improvement in software quality, and a 17 percent improvement in the frequency of application deployments—all leading to 22 percent more customers and a 19 percent increase in revenue.

In the application economy, every business is a software business. This is why DevOps is quickly becoming one of the most valuable disciplines for your business. It’s focused on improving the quality and speed of delivering new apps. And it’s about tightly integrating development and operations to do so.

This is driving businesses everywhere to take a second look at what they may have initially thought was just a buzzword – here one day and gone the next. Now everyone is wondering, “Can we adopt a DevOps method ourselves? And will it work for us?”

DevOps Challenges and Problems

It doesn’t matter whether you are in Cloud, Enterprise, or Mobile. For each of you, stable software delivery on time is the key to your business success. Some of the severe issues blocking your software delivery are:

• Building and maintaining servers – Time-consuming and unproductive
• No environment management – Differences in development and production environments
• Deployments are a blocker – Upgrade risk due to manual management of multiple application configurations and versions – Dependency on specific deployment engineer
• Hacking – Fixing directly in production (instead of a proper hotfix process) and forgetting to check into the source control

The 7 Cs’ of DevOps

The simple Mantra of DevOps is – “People over Process over Tools.” With the right people, establish the proper process and choose the right tools to deliver the results:

We can have a seamless, agile delivery by embracing the following 7 C’s.

1.     Communication
2.     Collaboration
3.     Controlled Process
4.     Continuous Code Inspection & Integration
5.     Continuous Deployment
6.     Continuous Testing
7.     Continuous Monitoring

DevOps and AWS Well-Architected Framework

As more and more Organizations integrate DevOps strategies into their workloads, there is no shortage of technologies that can help them transition and ensure successful adoption. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the leading Cloud provider globally and offers the most advanced options for creating cloud computing infrastructure and features available to businesses. Their Well-Architected Framework has been developed to help Solution Architects build secure, high-performing, efficient, and resilient infrastructure for their applications. The AWS Well-Architected Framework supports and enhances many of the same best practices that DevOps encourages. Read the DevOps and AWS Well-Architected Framework article to learn more about how AWS supports DevOps and its advantages.

DevOps Case Studies

DevOps enables enterprises to eliminate the traditional linear processes and replace them with processes characterized by synchronicity and symmetry. With so many business benefits of DevOps to achieve, it is no surprise that DevOps tools are emerging as powerful enablers of digital transformation plans for organizations. Click here to read DevOps Case Studies.

[Recommended Reading: Evolution Of DevOps: From A Niche Concept To Business Imperative]

Bonus – Introduction to DevOps on AWS e-Book

Download this free guide to learn more about how you can seamlessly transition from traditional development methodology to DevOps Solutions and Optimize Your DevOps Strategy on AWS.

To get the latest insights, research and expert articles on AWS Services, Cloud Migration, DevOps and other technologies, subscribe to our Blog Newsletter here. For AWS Case studies and success stories, visit Case Study Section

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Even before the pandemic hit, industry 4.0 had brought sweeping changes across manufacturing functions. With COVID-19, manufacturing organizations were compelled to deal with the new realities vastly different from the old normal. To stay ahead of the competition and relevant in a highly volatile market, manufacturers must remain agile, make their supply chains flexible & resilient and adopt digital technologies in unprecedented ways.

Global disruption and Industry 4.0 are now driving a new wave of modernization in the sector. Innovative manufacturing technologies are transforming factory floors, supply chains, customer & employee experience and partnerships on an ongoing basis.

Here’s looking at top trends that will further accelerate the adoption of smart manufacturing globally.

Industrial IoT (IIoT) will see higher adoption: If numbers are anything to go by, smart manufacturing will increasingly leverage IIoT in several ways to improve industrial processes. According to reports, more than 50 per cent of industrial enterprises will use IIoT platforms by 2025, a massive leap from the mere 10 per cent that adopted the technology in 2020. IIoT will be critical as manufacturers shift their focus from linear transactions, prioritizing cost and efficiency to effectiveness and customer value.

IIoT will be the cornerstone of organizations’ modernization journey, as it will drive a more holistic and sustainable approach to delivering new customer experiences. It will also allow industrial organizations to extend and enhance their IoT use cases and facilitate seamless IT-OT convergence, considered the next big wave in manufacturing.

Enhanced AI/ML use cases to drive predictability & efficiency: The global disruption has had manufacturers relooking at demand forecasting, production-, supply- and logistic- planning. Instead of using traditional data sets that only derive restricted insights, manufacturers will increasingly leverage advanced automation technologies such as AI/ML and predictive analytics to optimize planning. This means that firms will leverage external data sets encompassing the entire value chain of suppliers, customers, or weather forecasters. A combination of ML-based tools and IIoT will be leveraged significantly in process improvement, production, quality control and security.

Additive manufacturing to become true industrial manufacturing technology:

COVID-19 has proven to be a turning point for additive manufacturing or 3D printing technology. Manufacturers across the globe used the power of 3D printing to invent new products quickly, manufacture on-demand and, most importantly, manufacture locally when supply chains were severely hit. One of the most significant advancements in the additive manufacturing process is the infusion of machine learning which is bringing a data-driven approach to 3D printing and opening up more mature use cases. A digital twin is another trend that is set to revolutionize 3D manufacturing.

In the long run, innovative manufacturers take 3D printing beyond prototyping and leverage the technology’s potential as a more sustainable manufacturing approach.

Digital Technologies to Aid the New Normal in Manufacturing: Remote work and collaboration was a new shift that the manufacturing sector had to adapt to. As an industry for which remote working was an alien concept, the manufacturing sector had to make significant alterations to how it worked. In the new standard, firms must ensure that noncritical employees can continue to work remotely while critical employees are provided with safe working environments. As a result, firms will extend their investments beyond collaboration, physical distancing and location-tracing technologies. For example, there will be an increased uptake in technologies such as machine vision algorithms and wearables for employees.

Manufacturing firms will also invest in process automation technologies to improve efficiencies. At the same time, Cloud will continue to be a strategic area of investment to drive digital transformation and all these modernization initiatives in the sector. In 2021, the manufacturing industry is expected to outpace the average cloud adoption rate as firms strive to stay agile and resilient.

Smart manufacturing is all set to be the new normal for the industry in 2021!

The post How Smart Manufacturing Is Set To Disrupt Industry 4.0 In 2021 appeared first on Rapyder.

Below listed are the most common cloud security myths that all SMEs need to consider, focusing on exploring the truth behind successfully running and securing all enterprise cloud solutions:

Myth 1: The Cloud Is Risky. Why Invest?

The fact is that the cloud is noway inherently unsafe. Cloud technologies are no less safe when used correctly than any typical data center. It is mandatory to consider the incident response mechanisms across the cloud to safeguard from exploitation. Vulnerable customer codes or improper cloud configuration are the careless factors that cause real risks. So, SMEs need to focus on them more than the probable security flaws that could be discovered in the cloud provider’s code or infrastructure.

On average, over 90% of small businesses experience security benefits after transitioning to the cloud. Cloud isn’t risky, and it is undoubtedly an investment worth making. The business is responsible for granting and administrating permissions to customize the cloud environment to eliminate vulnerabilities or escalate enterprise security issues.

Myth 2: The Cloud Provider is Solely Responsible for All Security Requirements

Cloud migration is a ‘shared’ and not any party’s ‘sole’ responsibility. Before investing in any cloud solution, businesses need to be clear about their expectations and responsibilities. The businesses need to control specific aspects of the cloud services while the cloud solution providers carry out the rest. The solution vendor protects the systems post-data upload, while the business ensures that only safe data is processed and uploaded to the cloud. Solutions providers will only outline specific responsibilities for themselves and their clients in their service level agreement (SLA), which should be mutually agreed upon and practiced.

Myth 3: Access Control Isn’t An Issue

In the virtual world, cloud data can be accessed from anywhere — opening the floodgates for the threat actors exploiting the existing cloud deployments. Maintaining a stout access control mechanism over the enterprise cloud environment is critical to prevent unauthorized users from entering the system. Many cloud providers promise advanced access control capabilities out of the box, setting stringent authentication regulations across the entire cloud infrastructure. Still, the actual responsibility to overlook all access control mechanisms lies in the hands of the businesses.

Myth 4: Cloud Multitenancy Expands the Data Risk Landscape

Public cloud environments are advanced multitenant environments, operating diverse users’ cloud data on a shared server. Although they might seem to be risky at first, the reality is that only authorized people have access to their data, even on the public cloud. The cloud providers partition all critical data to restrict access to the user who uploads it. Multitenant cloud environments are no particular case; they are no more or less risky than other storage environments.

Myth 5: The Existing Security Tools Can Seamlessly Integrate With the Cloud

It’s tempting to assume that legacy security tools can handle all cloud solutions’ overall security, but that’s not always true. While specific on-premise security tools expertly support integration with the new cloud solutions, it’s a safe bet that businesses will need to add new security tools to their infrastructure. These could be native security tools offered by the cloud solution vendor or third-party installations.

Myth 6: The Cloud is Already Secure, With No Further Need to Monitor for Security Breaches

In today’s world, security hackers are getting more sophisticated each day – guaranteeing complete security is impossible. Even if the business takes all the required proactive measures to keep the cloud security threats out, specific threats like malware always lurk in the cloud environment. The cloud providers and most third-party vendors thankfully offer competitive cloud monitoring tools to track down suspicious cloud mishaps or threats. Businesses can implement cloud monitoring solutions for security, but tracking those tools’ performance is equally vital.

Conclusion

When businesses migrate to the cloud, the benefits are not only limited to the agility offered by cloud solutions but way beyond it. Cloud migration also creates several negative tensions, mainly due to the inexperience of collaborating with cloud solutions. This combination of incredible benefits vs. the restricting pressures has created such myths about the cloud in SMEs’ minds. Businesses must be competent to outlive these challenges to unveil the benefits of adopting the cloud and tapping all unexplored business expansion avenues for future success.

To learn more about cloud security, visit: www.rapyder.com/aws-cloud-security-service-provider/ 

Want to know how to secure your cloud or get started with your cloud journey! Contact us now for a free consultation

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What is a Hybrid Cloud?

The term “hybrid cloud environment” refers to a storage and computing infrastructure that is made up of a combination of:

• Minimum of 1 private cloud and 1 public cloud
• 2 or more private clouds
• More than 2 public clouds

The many resources are coordinated to function together with as little trouble as possible. The “best of both worlds” can be achieved using a hybrid cloud implementation. For example, companies can employ cloud services where it makes sense but maintain other functions on-premises or inside a private cloud. As a result, there will be more room for adaptation.

What is a Hybrid Cloud Strategy?

Some companies get a multi-cloud approach and a hybrid cloud strategy confused with one another.

• A hybrid cloud strategy is a plan for setting up and running applications and services on several public and private clouds.
• A multi-cloud approach may or may not involve a hybrid cloud. The fundamental purpose of implementing a multi-cloud approach is to lessen reliance on a single cloud host in case of failure.

An organization that is in the process of undertaking a digital transformation has to have a hybrid cloud adoption. Your company may wish to (or be required to) integrate public clouds, private clouds, and resources located on-premises to achieve the level of agility required to achieve the competitive edge it seeks.

Hybrid Cloud Architecture: How do Hybrid Clouds Work?

The idea behind hybrid cloud systems is that they are a mix of public and private cloud services. Companies benefit from this by having more control over how their storage and computing resources are effectively used. There are no restrictions on moving an operation from the cloud to an on-premises data centre if it is better equipped to handle it than the cloud-based counterpart.

Companies can be flexible concerning the configuration settings, picking just the features required to meet business goals. When connecting the components of a hybrid cloud, resources may be linked through a local-area network (LAN) or wide-area network (WAN) (WAN). Additionally, companies may employ a virtual private network (VPN) or application programming interface (API). Your cloud solution providers can safely maintain the hybrid cloud system and adjust its functions to suit the company’s unique requirements best.

What is the Purpose of a Hybrid Cloud Strategy?

If you want to take advantage of the scalability and security offered by public clouds while still maintaining control over your data on-premises, a hybrid cloud solution is the right choice. Hybrid cloud computing can be an excellent choice for those of you with essential systems running in private and public clouds. Examples of possible applications include the following:

1. Optimize at Your Comfortable Pace

Using a hybrid cloud, you can gradually shift your IT infrastructure from on-premises to the cloud at a pace that works best for your organization.

2. Keep Up With All of the Regulatory Requirements

Regulations govern your app’s ability to function in many different industries. Utilizing private and public cloud services without violating applicable regulations is easier with hybrid cloud solutions.

3. Bringing Applications to Geographically Distant Edge Locations

If you are in the business of operating in an industry that requires edge hybrid computing for low latency, such as retail kiosks or network nodes in the telecommunications industry, a hybrid approach gives you the ability to execute certain applications at the edge.

5 Hybrid Cloud Advantages

Compared to other cloud-based and non-cloud-based options, a hybrid cloud is a preferable alternative for many businesses. The advantages outweigh the cost.

1. Scalability

The cost of building, maintaining, and growing infrastructure is a crucial obstacle a private network faces. Before the availability of cloud services, a corporation had to wait until it had sufficient finances to acquire additional physical equipment to expand its IT system.

Using a hybrid cloud configuration makes it simpler to add additional processing power and execute more complicated and resource-intensive applications using public cloud possibilities. There is no need to wait until you can afford to purchase several more servers since you can use the cloud services resources at the get-go.

2. Control

Instead of placing your whole IT infrastructure at the disposal of a third-party provider, you can tailor the private end of your cloud model to your company’s specifications. Adjusting which infrastructure components should handle various applications and processes is much simpler with a hybrid system. A multi-cloud or on-site solution may need new agreements with service providers or procuring new equipment to achieve the agility required. When you use a hybrid cloud, you’re in complete command and can avoid these expensive or time-consuming procedures.

3. Security

Hybrid cloud architecture allows your company to benefit from both the security of a private cloud and the flexibility of a public cloud simultaneously. The data saved inside a private cloud environment will still need to be transferred to a public cloud to be processed and used by apps, analytics systems, and other procedures. However, while working in a hybrid cloud environment, it is pretty simple to use encryption strategies to guarantee that the data will remain secure during the procedure. The IT department has many alternatives, with a hybrid cloud to make transferring and storing data more secure.

4. Speed

Speed is another benefit of having control over your network’s resources. A cloud service provider can improve the network to minimize latency and simplify data transmission in a hybrid cloud environment, even if it is not faster than a public or multi-cloud system. In addition, a hybrid environment enables the utilization of edge computing, which can speed up your whole IT infrastructure. If each programme is placed in a section of the environment tailored adequately for its function, this improved control may save necessary processing time.

5. Cost

On-site storage can limit growth, which results in increased opportunity costs. Hybrid clouds can help the company save money in the long run by reducing long-term expenditures. Because scaling up a hybrid cloud is simpler and less costly, the organisation saves money throughout its expansion. As an added benefit, transferring digital assets between two separate clouds would be less expensive when sensitive data is kept in the private section of a hybrid cloud.

Helping Companies Adopt Hybrid Cloud Strategy with Rapyder

The hybrid cloud strategy provides unrivalled agility, scalability, and innovation. Organisations are going to the cloud to improve company operations and efficiency. This requires a partner with experience, dependability, and various technological skills. Rapyder is your partner, with an unrivalled track record of success across many clients in India.

Conclusion

It should come as no surprise that the hybrid cloud has witnessed the fastest adoption rate in 2022. Compared to alternative cloud-based or non-cloud-based solutions, a hybrid cloud strategy is often seen as the best choice by many businesses. A hybrid cloud strategy provides businesses with increased adaptability, an increased number of deployment choices, increased security and compliance, and more value from their already-existing IT infrastructure.

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With the advent of Cloud Computing, individuals, enterprises, and large organizations are migrating towards the Cloud. AWS Cloud is the most popular cloud service provider, supporting over 100 services. Misconfigurations are common, and AWS is an attractive attack vector due to its complexity and ubiquity. However, the variety of security services can also become quite intimidating for newcomers, leaving them unsure of where to start. We capture just a tiny amount of services that are available to use in the AWS security Eco-system.

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)

Whether you are a small company with a single account or a massive one with thousands of accounts to have different teams accessing resources simultaneously when working on projects, now the question arises of how we can provide access to the team securely.

With AWS IAM, access can be provided to users within the same account and to users from other AWS accounts. Access to resources can be restricted with the help of IAM policies.

IAM risks misconfigurations that result in security vulnerabilities, such as:

• Creating privileged roles, which any AWS user can assume. Anyone knowledgeable about the role can assume the role and perform privileged operations.
•  Providing overly permissive privileges to a role used by a service such as EC2 or Lambda. Upon exploiting a vulnerability/misconfiguration in the application running/using the service, the attacker might get hold of the role’s temporary access credentials, allowing the attacker to perform privileged operations.
•  Providing low-privileged users the ability to perform critical IAM operations such as attaching policy, adding a user to the group, etc.

Here are some defensive implementations that you can perform:

• Utilize AWS Config that comes with prebuilt rules.
•  For IAM permissions, follow the principles of least-privileged access when creating policies and only assign minimal permissions. You can also limit IAM permissions using service control policies and permissions boundaries.

AWS S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) is a storage service that offers industry-leading scalability, data availability, security, and performance. All sizes of companies and industries can use AWS S3 with all kinds of use cases like mobile/web applications, big data, machine learning, and many more.

AWS storage services have different provisions for highly confidential, frequently accessed, and not-so-frequently accessed data. However, S3 is highly scalable, reliable, and easy to use.

Here are some security practices for AWS S3 to consider:-

1. Implement minor privilege identity policies to limit access to S3 resources by combining Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, bucket policies, and S3 Access Points.
2.  Ensure that your S3 buckets are not publicly accessible. Block it at the organizational level.
3.  Encrypt all Amazon S3 data at rest using Server-side Encryption (SSE) or client-side encryption.
4.  Using versioning will help to preserve, retrieve, and restore your objects.
5.  Use Macie to scan for sensitive data outside of designated areas.
6.  Enable logging for S3 using CloudTrail.
7.  Identify and audit all of your Amazon S3 buckets.
8.  Implement monitoring of your S3 environment and bucket policies.

CloudTrail

In the Cloud, everything works with an API call, whether using the management console, the CLI, or the AWS SDK. CloudTrail monitors all actions (i.e., API Calls) in AWS. This becomes very useful in incidents and troubleshooting why some security service is not working.

Do these steps to get started:

1. Turn on CloudTrail.
2. Create an IAM user with limited privileges (e.g., can access EC2 but not S3).
3. Analyze the events in CloudTrail for this user creation.
4. Try doing something your IAM policy does not allow (accessing S3 when you can only create EC2).
5. Look at how the events appear for this failed event.

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As per a study report: 41% of enterprise workloads will be run on public cloud platforms by 2021. While companies state cloud migration is pivotal to their business strategies, most struggle in creating a cloud migration project plan.

Thus, it’s time to revamp your cloud migration strategy for better business processes and avoid disruption. Before that, let’s briefly understand what cloud migration is & benefits of migrating on the cloud.

What is cloud migration? 

Cloud migration refers to moving an organization’s data, applications, and other elements into a cloud computing environment. The type of cloud-to-cloud migration depends on what the organization wants to achieve from digitization. One of the most common models is to transfer data and applications from an on-premise data center to the public cloud. Here’s how an organization typically performs cloud migration with the correct set of cloud migration tools:

Today, more and more organizations are moving their data and business processes to the cloud. So let’s start by discussing why they believe cloud migration is critical for their growth.

What are the benefits of cloud migration? 

Right from apps and data becoming easily accessible to different teams to make their day-to-day processes more efficient, there are several reasons why businesses are moving to the cloud. But here are the ones that make on-premise to cloud migration a definite choice for most:

1. Reduced IT costs: Using resources like public cloud services results in paying as per use. This dramatically reduces costs, bringing down the upfront capital expenditure required to implement and maintain on-premise equipment. With capital and operational spending reduced, businesses can invest more in growth strategies and innovations.

2. Digitization of business: AWS cloud migration enables organizations to optimize their business processes and activities more efficiently. A well-thought-through cloud migration strategy can help companies to become more efficient by leveraging a mix of digital technologies.

3. Growth-focused: With cloud migration services, you move many processes to the public cloud. This removes a lot of time-consuming activities in managing your IT infrastructure and platforms from your plate. With more time and resources, you can focus on business-driven activities like creating value for customers, innovations, and driving more revenue.

4. Agility in business:

The only way to last in a competitive industry is to move fast against challenges and tap into market opportunities at the right time. The public cloud provides this agility to businesses with accessible infrastructure and resource scalability. Companies can take on newer projects without having to worry about base-level requirements.

While the benefits are hard to miss, an organization must have the right cloud computing strategy. Certain things must be considered when executing a cloud-to-cloud migration.

What are the best practices to avoid disruption during Cloud migration?

Organizations follow their cloud migration strategies based on the resources, technology, and skills available to them. While some successfully implement the cloud in their processes effectively, others struggle to migrate their data. That’s why, as advanced AWS cloud service providers, we assemble the cloud migration best practices we swear by.

1. Create a cloud migration strategy

The first thing to do in a cloud migration process is create an outline. Begin by mapping out your business motives, use cases, and reasons for moving to the cloud. Break your cloud migration strategy into phases to reduce disruption risks and ensure efficiency.

[Also Read: The Essentials Of An Effective Cloud Migration Strategy ]

Source: AWS

Here are 6 R’s for Migrating Applications to the Cloud

• Rehosting:  This strategy comes into play when there is a significant legacy migration scenario. In this case, organizations want to scale their migration quickly to meet new business needs. So they rehost most of their applications instead of developing new ones using cloud-native capabilities.
• Replatforming: In this strategy, you’re considering your existing architecture of the application and considering making optimizations to drive more benefits out of it. For instance, you could spend less time managing database instances by migrating to a database-as-a-service platform.
• Repurchasing: As the name suggests, this part of the strategy is about considering moving to a different product during migration. Usually, companies can be seen moving to a SaaS platform at this stage.
• Refactoring/ Re-architecting: Use this strategy to fulfill vital business needs. Be it adding new features to an existing application or scaling it to perform better than its current environment, this is where you strategize how the application will be architected and developed using cloud-native features.
• Retire: This is the strategy where you remove the IR portfolio that is no longer in use or can be simply turned off. To verify their usage, you must consider each functional area that owns the applications. Cutting out waste lessens the surface area you need to secure during the migration, directing the team to focus on resources that matter.
• Retain/ Revisit: As a thumb rule, you should only be migrating applications that are currently being used by your business. If you aren’t sure about an application that was recently upgraded or are not inclined to migrate them, you can revisit those later as your IT portfolio changes.

2. Establish a governance framework 

Compliance and security are top concerns for organizations moving to the cloud. Creating a governance framework helps you set policy-based rules to prepare for secure cloud adoption in various business processes. The framework considers the risks of using third-party services and defines how to use different tools. It also documents the organization’s structures, roles, responsibilities, objectives, policies, and decision-making framework.

AWS designed governance as a scale framework to conform to an organization’s structure and business processes. You can read all about it here.

source

3. Optimize the cloud network : 

Cloud migration takes a lot of your business processes to the public cloud. The network used by the cloud is the public internet by default. So if your organization is worried about the internet being too slow or not too secure, contact your internet service provider for optimized speed or choose Amazon web services cloud migration. They offer a dedicated network connection to their infrastructure.

4. Upskill your team on cloud migration : 

Most companies face cloud migration challenges due to a lack of expertise. So when you’re working on the cloud-to-cloud migration, train your team too. Ask your AWS cloud migration service provider for training sessions to get different departments up-to-speed with cloud concepts.

5. Ensure software licensing : 

When creating your cloud migration strategy, document all enterprise applications and software. Remember to go through their licensing rules concerning cloud computing services. If you’re unsure, remember to talk to the vendor to see if the licenses you’ve purchased are suitable or can be updated for usage.

Pro tip: Use a software asset management tool. It helps you reduce the risks, costs, and complexities associated with license management in the cloud.    

6. Implement automations : 

The one thing you need to ensure during cloud migration is to avoid service disruption. Downtime for your business could mean a loss in efficiency and overall revenue. To minimize the risk of downtime, automate repeated patterns in your process wherever possible. It will lower the risk of disruption and speed up the cloud-to-cloud migration. Several cloud migration tools can help you implement this automation while executing the strategy.

7. Monitor usage of cloud services : 

According to Forbes, about 35% of cloud budgets get wasted. That’s why you need to monitor your usage when you’re working on the cloud-to-cloud migration. Identify running instances across the different cloud migration services and collect logs from the apps, databases, and network touchpoints you’re using. Since moving to the public cloud means you’re paying as per your usage, this will help you ensure that your IT requirements are being met on optimized budgets.

Pro tip: Also monitor for industry compliance and security continually. 

8. Leverage cloud service provider support : 

Executing an AWS cloud migration strategy without any disruptions can be overwhelming. So instead of tackling it all in-house, you can get support from an AWS cloud service provider. They are equipped with the right software and have vast experience in helping similar businesses move to digitization.

Why should you invest in Cloud Migration?

Industry study shows that cloud computing services are expected to reach $68.4 billion by 2021. Organizations will be seen using the cloud for different purposes, be it public, private, hybrid, or a mix of computing models.

To conclude, cloud migration is needed as businesses target becoming more efficient at processes and agile. But creating an AWS cloud migration strategy and moving through the steps requires the right skills and technology.

That’s where choosing an AWS cloud service provider like Rapyder comes into the picture. As an advanced AWS consulting partner, the team has years of expertise in strategic cloud consulting, DevOps automation, managed services, and security consulting. We don’t just ensure following all the cloud migration best practices but also educate your organization’s employees on how the cloud changes their day-to-day processes for easy adoption.

Want to learn more about cloud migration and how your business can benefit from it? Contact us today

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