Running a business in the cloud offers numerous advantages.

Running a business in the cloud offers numerous advantages.

Running a business in the cloud offers numerous advantages, depending on the industry, business size and location. Deloitte has grouped the potential benefits for banks into the following four categories:

• Improve business agility

• Innovate through consumption of external services• Leverage industry-specific solutions

• Paradigm shift in IT spendingEach of these attributes brings valuable benefits when implementing a cloud strategy. For example, a shift in spending can enable companies to reduce working capital and free up cash to invest in the exploration of new technologies; while an improvement in agility can facilitate innovation and also accelerate the shift towards IT service consumption instead of IT ownership, which impacts the spending paradigm.

A successful cloud transformation should capture benefits across all four area