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TCS VIEWPOINT UTILITY WEEK | 8TH - 14TH JULY 2016 | 23 Sponsored report: Cloud adoption Brought to you in association with To read the Utility Week and Tata Consultancy Services report, Cloud adoption and UK utilities, in full, go to the downloads section of utilityweek.co.uk While utilities have historically approached the cloud and other digital technologies in moderation, Tata Consultancy Services believes this is going to change. A fundamental shi in focus from capex- based spending to opex-based will help to shi the industry towards adoption of cloud- based technologies in particular. These will help to spur the rapid innovation cycles that are essential for the utility industry to tackle the multitude of challenges that they face. Elasticity in computing power gives chief information officers a more effective way to handle seasonal spikes in IT infrastructure demand, or additional capacity to deal with crises. And indeed, business functions in utilities see adoption of point cloud-based solutions as a mechanism to 'bypass' IT to get that functionality they want quickly. However, without an overarching strategy to integrate these point solutions into a seamless end-to-end process, many business are disappointed that their 'cloudi- fication' does not yield the efficien- cies they set out to achieve. The cloud also has huge potential for processes where volumes are changing signifi- cantly and future volumes are uncer- tain. For example, interactive voice response and exchanges are becoming digital and volumes are moving to digital channels. The area is rapidly moving to the cloud, freeing utilities from the threat of stranded infrastructure. On the other hand, for some processes cloud adoption is constrained by an inability to handle volume-intensive processes such as large nightly batches for billing. More mature solutions around this space will help accelerate adoption in this area. TCS's experience working with this indus- try demonstrates that adoption has started. Security and complexity concerns would still be barriers to the cloudification of operational systems but, increasingly, non-operational technologies are getting roadmaps that enable some sort of movement to the cloud using infrastructure-as-a-service, soware- as-a-service or platform-as-a-service models. "Without an overarching strategy, many business are disappointed that their 'cloudification' does not yield the efficiencies they set out to achieve" WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING BEST DESCRIBES YOUR USE OF CLOUD TECHNOLOGY? DO YOU EVER ANTICIPATE YOUR COMPLETE ORGANISATION BEING MIGRATED TO A CLOUD-BASED ENVIRONMENT? DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE BETWEEN PRIVATE AND PUBLIC CLOUD OPERATORS? Within next 12 months 11% 22% 11% 26% 30% Next 1-2 years Next 3-4 years At least 5 years away Migration will never be complete Complete No Home Work Water Overall Energy company Energy network Water Energy company Energy network Partial Don't know None Yes 56% 50% 62% 50% 25% 25% 31% 20% 30% 25% 19% 7% 10% 87% 3% 7% 76% 17% 25% 75% 8% 77% 15% 77% 23%