It is my third year of having a cloud platform. Year 1 happened due to major project. Year 2 was exploratory and I started to use simple features like object storage. It was only on the third year that I managed to explore and build an entire cloud architecture. There is no turning back because Cloud platform has provided me freedom to Agile and configured applications quickly. These is a reflection on why I need a Cloud Platform.
Self Service
The reality of self service finally reached the IT community. That self service comes in a Cloud Platform. As product owner, we usually need a box in the past to initiate any new product features. Such request takes a long time from procurement to deployment of the application module. All these efforts can now be self service at a cloud platform. You can quickly spin up a compute within minutes. You can even setup entire eCommerce architecture in a cloud platform.
Finally Agile
Another favourite advantage in having a cloud platform is to be fully agile. I am no longer constrained by dependencies like network, computes or storage. These are now easily available with cloud platform. In another words, you can agile innovations with high uncertainty. You can also RAD (Rapid Application Development) or DevOps your changes because cloud is configurable.
The freedom of being agile and ability to self service are key reasons on why I will continue to need a cloud platform. If is also rare to find organisations that are still on-premise. I am excited that the next years will be spend to migrate the needed to cloud platform one way or another!
Danny Kwok 