[This article was written by Asami Novak.]

 According to the 2015 Computerworld Forecast Study, cloud projects are the single most important technology initiatives right now and are expected to cause the most disruption in the future. That’s awesome news, but what if you’re not one of the companies prioritizing cloud?

To help you catch up, we’ve outlined three quick snapshots of the reasons why we believe having a cloud strategy in 2015 is not only going to be a key business initiative, but a business imperative as well. (To learn more about the benefits of migrating to the cloud, along with the cloud success stories of Zumba and Condé Nast, read the article “Go Cloud or Go Home.”)

So, why should you migrate your apps to the cloud?

1. Flexibility to quickly scale your environment up or down. By hosting your infrastructure in the cloud instead of on-premises, you can move faster by reducing the time it takes to provision new infrastructure. And the same goes for scaling down. You can easily add or remove new servers without having to incur additional CapEx on hardware you may not be using all the time.
2. More time to innovate, less time to maintain. When you can grow your infrastructure and business more efficiently, you have more time for your IT team to work on high-value tasks, like improving your product. Not only can you innovate more internally, but you can also take advantage of external innovation from your cloud vendor(s).
3. Better experience for your customers. With a faster way to grow and more time to focus on your product, your business can be better positioned to serve your customers. You can push out new products and feature enhancements faster, find and fix bugs before they impact user experiences, and analyze your software data to understand what customers really want.

Already on the cloud bandwagon? Nice! We’ve got additional cloud resources that may come in handy. And if you want to find out how New Relic can help you on your cloud journey, go to www.newrelic.com/solutions/cloud-migration.