Fashion and sustainability are working the cloud.

How companies in fashion, gaming, and sustainability are working the cloud to find new silver linings.

Leaders across sectors and markets know that in order to digitize quickly and effectively following Covid-19, they need to accelerate their journey to the cloud. Even pre-pandemic, few activities in modern life were untouched by cloud innovation, from buying groceries to taking out insurance. According to a 2022 Foundry survey, this race to the cloud is accelerating at breakneck speed: 69% of organizations have accelerated their cloud migration over the past 12 months. Ironically, the very speed at which cloud transformation is occurring makes it increasingly difficult to grasp comprehensively how the world is changing. But it is having a profound effect on sectors consumers care deeply about, including gaming, fashion, and sustainability.

Gaming: Cloud will become the default ‘platform’

Gamers were some of the earliest adopters of the cloud. Players stream almost limitless gaming worlds to a similarly a vast number of mobile and computer devices for setting monthly fees, without necessarily knowing cloud technologies are making it possible. It eliminates the need for platform barriers such as specialized equipment or large amounts of storage space.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia, all key players in the cloud gaming space, are still working out how to balance a quality gaming experience unspoiled by network latency with a workable business model. When they get it right, and they will, the cloud could become the default platform for players. Indeed, the cloud gaming market is forecast to reach $ 9.4 billion by 2027, a CAGR of 48.3% from 2022.

The arrival of GPU-as-a-Service (GPUaaS) is acting as a catalyst for this evolution. High gaming resolutions and high-quality system build require graphic process units (GPUs) because they reduce the load on microprocessors and enhance the quality of all visual content. GPUaaS leverages cloud technology to enable hundreds of graphically intensive games to stream concurrently at high frame rates, reducing latency.

Fashion: preparing for the time metaverse with a collection of connected products

The fashion industry is equally embracing cloud-enabled technologies. Not only with the boost to eCommerce and automation, but also with the increasing volume of online and contact-free shopping.

Cloud is creating the opportunity for exciting innovations in this sector, with companies like Eon able use its cloud-based Platform-as-a-Service to turn clothing products into intelligent assets — physical objects that are able to sense, record, and communicate information about themselves and/or their surroundings.

But how do we measure the real-time data the asset generates? Enter its digital twin: a virtual rendering of a physical product that enables brands to obtain data and insights critically required to foster and grow lasting relationships with their customers. Fashion and retail companies are connecting with customers using these intelligent items, and each one has a digital twin to track its lifecycle and value. The Eon Product Cloud IoT (Internet of Things) platform enables this true “connected products economy.”

Additionally, cloud-based supply-chain management solutions will surpass $11 billion by 2023, with cloud computing creating new avenues for collaboration between factories, distributors and companies in the supply chain. Twenty-four-hour, real-time access to data and faster, more effective communication between links in the supply chain is suddenly a possibility.

The digitization of many industries sparked conversations around the globe of the new virtual reality: the metaverse. And cloud-enabled augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies are making strong inroads in the fashion industry. Customers using the OBSESS platform are able to browse an online rendering of an actual store, recreated down to the music that consumers would hear there. The platform uses a 3D commerce cloud to give users a truly immersive shopping experience.

Sustainability: Cloud goes beyond just reducing energy consumption

Regardless of industry, geography or size, businesses face increasing financial and compliance burdens in relation to climate change. Managing increasingly expanding storage demands, powerful computing engines and the need for always-on customer services leads to businesses focusing on reducing their energy consumption. In the UK, businesses are set to achieve net-zero by 2050, according to the UK government.

Migrating business infrastructure to the cloud can reduce CO2 emissions by nearly 60 million tons a year, but the cloud has applications for sustainability that extend beyond cutting energy consumption. Farmers often lack proper insights into their soil conditions, so they resort to ad-hoc irrigation and fertilizer application, wasting valuable resources and limiting yield potential — but agricultural companies can use sensors to get data from the soil itself. When sent to a centralized platform running on the cloud, on-premise data centers, which are high in energy consumption, are not required.

Eclpising the competition

Ultimately, the cloud is a hypercharged space for innovation to take place. It is easy for industries to be overwhelmed by the open framework for infinite ways to grow, evolve and build that the cloud represents. By adopting the founding principles, such as using on-demand, elasticity, and infinite scalability, the gaming, fashion, and sustainability industries are already maximizing myriad routes to evolve and succeed. Making use of the cloud does not guarantee greatness, but, with the right support and applied in the right direction, harnessing the power of the cloud does.

By: Jason Gregson, Head of AWS Programs and Operations, DoiT International.