In today's fast-paced digital landscape, cloud applications serve as powerful enablers, providing businesses with the agility to rapidly deploy new services and updates. They empower businesses to innovate and provide more resilience than traditional IT infrastructure – enabling organizations to scale resources dynamically, such as handling traffic spikes at key moments.

None of this is new information – in fact, cloud migration has been on the agenda for a decade now - with businesses grappling on-premises, multi- or hybrid- cloud infrastructure decisions. Key ambitions have been focused on maximizing cost-effectiveness, improving resilience and elevating customer experiences.

On a macro level, many UK businesses feel good progress has been made, with 61% of executives believing the computing infrastructure in the UK is a strength, according to new Accenture research. Yet, businesses are still facing major challenges, in particular with their highly complex, monolithic core solutions, and these are getting ever more urgent as organizations look to liberate their huge wealth of data and apply AI.

The impact of AI on cloud adoption

So much has been said on the opportunity of gen AI – a technology that could double the UK’s economic growth during the next 15 years. Not only in its personal productivity promise, but gen AI is already showing potential to reinvent processes across the entire value chain.

But applying AI into business processes has also introduced new challenges, including diverting attention away from ensuring their core foundations have the agility to keep up with AI’s advances in the first place. While companies can be lured by the short-term productivity boost of sporadic AI solutions, businesses need to keep focused on the core – not just the cool – and build their infrastructure around an AI strategy. A short-term view of AI risks complicating cloud costs and leads to the proliferation of AI products within the enterprise.

The development of technologies such as AI has also highlighted businesses are grappling with varying digital infrastructure capabilities, which can affect how an organization harnesses the potential of these new and innovative technologies. In fact, our research found when asked about their ability to realize the full potential from generative AI, one in five (19%) businesses felt their tech stack fell below cloud computing requirements and 16% felt they were below the cybersecurity requirements. And how to train such models? Clean, accurate data from the start helps companies avoid unwieldy and costly errors that can hold back the power of their AI investments.

Going back to basics then. A strong digital core allows enterprises to integrate key components and infrastructure like cloud, data, AI, and security easily, enabling dynamic operations, quick responses to market demands and the ability to drive reinvention.

Security as a foundational element

Organizations must prepare for constant flux and change. Geopolitical instability, environmental challenges, shifting consumer preferences, and spiraling supply chains continue to evolve the risk landscape. Meanwhile innovation, including AI, offers immense opportunities, but can also expand the attack surface and provide cybercriminals with powerful weaponry.

It’s therefore particularly worrying that against this backdrop, only half of organizations (53%) report to be completely prepared to defend against emerging threats, including deepfakes and generative AI powered malware, according to Accenture’s Pulse of Change research. Cloud providers offer advanced features like automated threat detection and AI-driven responses, helping businesses quickly identify and address cyber threats. These tools, along with robust encryption, access controls, and reliable disaster recovery solutions, provide critical protection against evolving risks.

Training for resilience

As cyberattacks become more sophisticated, adopting these security measures is a key step in ensuring operational resilience and safeguarding business operations. However, this should no longer solely be the responsibility of a CISO but instead should sit at the backbone of any business. The human element remains crucially important.

Employees are the first line of defense, and often the chink in the armor, so their ability to identify and report suspicious activity makes all the difference. However, effective training requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Simulations that replicate phishing attempts, for example, are invaluable in helping employees recognize and react to potential scams.

Driving growth

According to a recent Accenture study, companies with a strong digital core report faster growth and higher profitability compared to their peers. Such posture also helps enterprises to gain a fast or first-mover advantage and stay ahead of the competition. As businesses generate more data, the need for agile digital infrastructure that can analyze and leverage this are only becoming more critical.

Integrating robust security measures into the digital core is also not just a necessity but offers a strategic advantage. It ultimately helps to prevent threats, protect value and build a trusted ecosystem with partners and suppliers, in which collective growth can be fostered. Of course, having a customized solution to the enterprise or industry is also important – this is not a one size fits all approach. Yet, the common theme is that as businesses navigate the complexities of the modern technological landscape, those that prioritize a strong, secure digital core and are focused on smooth integration, will be better positioned to thrive.

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