As 2020 draws to a close, we are here to express our gratitude for your continuous support and to take a look back on this year with all of you.

In pursuit of the mission of "Cloud Simplified.", Alphaus is continuing its endeavor to support the effortless cloud experience in the world where cloud computing adoption shows further acceleration.

This year has been an eventful one, pushing us out of our comfort zones and teaching us to embrace change. The world saw the unprecedented spread of a viral infectious disease, COVID-19, making a tremendous impact in society. In the past year, the procurements of facial masks, vaccines, medical supplies etc. has revealed international dependence across countries. For now, the outlook of "with-" and "post corona era" remains uncertain due to the tensions between major superpowers and some radical political changes.

However, these societal changes are undoubtedly contributing to the further acceleration of the digital transformation of companies and organizations. The expansion of cloud usage is steadily progressing even in sectors that were previously more cautious in adoption of new technology, such as the public and financial sectors.

With that being said, let's dig in more to see how the year 2020 was like!

This year has largely been dominated by the outbreak of COVID-19, with a rising number of cases reported starting from December 2019. With restrictions on social activities and requests for quarantine measures across the globe, work-from-home has become a part of the new normal.

Organizations' spend on IT has increased under these circumstances. The Harvey Nash / KPMG CIO Survey 2020 reports that technology spend has risen at an unprecedented pace in the three months following the pandemic. (Harvey Nash & KPMG, 2020)

Furthermore, organizations' IT spending on cloud has shown significant increase. "The pandemic validated cloud’s value proposition," said Mr. Sid Nag at Gartner. With market forecast revealing that the aftermath of COVID-19 will increase cloud share of enterprises' IT costs from 9.1% in 2020 to 14.2% in 2024, Mr. Nag added that;

"The COVID-19 pandemic forced organizations to quickly focus on three priorities: preserve cash and optimize IT costs, support and secure a remote workforce, and ensure resiliency." (Gartner, 2020)

Starting mid-February, our team at Alphaus has adopted remote-working system in both of our offices in Japan and Malaysia.

From the number of inquiries we are getting daily, we realize that visualization and optimization of cloud costs has become an important issue for a lot of organizations. At the same time, we have been able to meet a wider range of customer needs by updating various functions such as support for Azure and GCP in addition to AWS. Below are some of major updates we've made this year;

At Alphaus, which strives to be an organization where cloud professionals gather, we have also focused on talent development of our coworkers. The number of major cloud vendor certifications earned by our coworkers at Alphaus has increased by 13 this year.

In addition, we received a series of great news from our customers that they were certified by the AWS Managed Service Provider (MSP) Program which are given to organizations that are highly capable in solving cloud end-users' complex business needs. We will continue to do our best to further strengthen your business.

In 2021, Alphaus is preparing various updates such as the following to redesign IT management in this cloud era.

Please stay tuned!

It is getting more realistic that the "new normal" that we have gradually become accustomed to over the year 2020 will continue in 2021. In the midst of great change, we hope to continue moving forward with you to build a new way of technology and business management.