As the economic crunch and inflationary pressures begin to hit technology and IT budgets, CIOs are turning toward industry-specific cloud platforms, The Wall Street Journal reported Dec. 20.
Industry-specific clouds come without the generic group of enterprise applications and are tailored to a specific industry's IT needs. For example, healthcare organizations have data sharing and protection requirements other industries do not.
Chad Brisendine, vice president and CIO at Bethlehem, Pa.-based St. Luke's University Health Network, deployed a healthcare-specific cloud that helped the system save money and build a healthcare-specific data system, according to the Journal.
Enterprise cloud vendors such as Oracle Cerner, Microsoft and Salesforce are turning to industry-specific cloud sales to generate revenue and growth.
"Technology built for industries generally is better than one size fits all," Oracle Executive Vice President Mike Sicilia told the newspaper. "What a major pharmaceutical company needs to bring new treatments to market isn't the same as what a telco needs to deliver text messages — or what a restaurant needs to shift to a hybrid takeout, dine-in model."