By Michael Brown 1

Business agility is one of those terms that you hear more and more, especially in relation to the primary benefits of cloud computing. However, it may not be entirely clear what it even means, as the headline of this Forbes article points out. Whatever business agility may be, it seems important for managed service providers (MSPs) specializing in the cloud and in cloud-based file sharing to become familiar with it.

What is Business Agility?

Business agility leads the list of reasons companies are adopting cloud technology, and yet it is still difficult to define what it actually is. The Wikipedia definition (although admittedly states there are multiple issues) defines business agility as:

“the ability of a business to adapt rapidly and cost efficiently in response to changes in the business environment.”

Of course this is a fairly vague definition, but overall the company’s ability to quickly and efficiently pivot its procedures, products, services, methods or strategy to changes in the industry would be defined as its agility.

How Does Business Agility Help?

It is safe to say that business agility can apply to a number of different aspects of business such as improved efficiency, lowered costs, innovation, and the ability to create new products and services. Cloud technologies and services are one of the most utilized tools for enabling these business goals. As MSPs are aware, the cloud offers companies’ tools to lower their costs and scale their operations up and down as needed. Technically MSPs have been providing their clients with improved agility via cloud tech, even if it wasn’t referred to by name.

How can MSPs Judge Business Agility?

Unfortunately due to its vague definition and unclear parameters, measuring the success of business agility is a bit more difficult, on a physical level anyway. The benefits of increasing business agility are often intangible. Sure using cloud services to decrease costs is measurable, but the idea that a business can scale up or down or completely alter its strategy extremely quickly in the future is not something that can be measured, but is incredibly important in the fast paced, ever changing business world we operate in today.

MSPs should be aware that business agility is a buzzword term that many potential clients are currently looking for when it comes to exploring cloud options. While the term itself may be a bit difficult to pin down, the fact of the matter is that cloud MSPs have been providing business agility to their clients all along, and therefore should simply adapt their current strategies to incorporate the new terminology and ideas, if they have not done so already.