Five essential elements to transform your cloud strategy
March 5, 2024 / Unisys Corporation
Short on time? Read the key takeaways:
- Cloud strategy must evolve continuously to leverage technology for business success, focusing on agility, scalability, and innovation.
- Aligning cloud strategy with long-term business objectives and embedding security and compliance are crucial for minimizing risks and optimizing benefits.
- Prioritize cloud applications based on business impact rather than ease of implementation to drive meaningful change and achieve desired outcomes.
- Selecting the right cloud transformation partner and establishing a cloud center of excellence (CCOE) are keys to effective cloud strategy and transformation.
In the rapidly changing world of technology, embracing cloud solutions has become crucial for business success.
Organizations worldwide understand the importance of cloud technologies in boosting agility, scalability and innovation. However, merely adopting cloud technology is insufficient. It's vital to continuously refine cloud strategies to respond effectively to evolving market trends and preserve a competitive advantage.
For organizations to stay adaptable to fluctuating market conditions and remain primed for future innovation, reassessing and enhancing your cloud strategy is imperative. As you navigate the changing landscape of cloud technology, here are five key aspects to consider to help ensure your organization is well-positioned for sustained growth and ongoing innovation.
1. How much business disruption are you willing to incur?
Consider how much business disruption you can withstand as you move along your cloud journey. Be aware that your tolerance for disruption may differ from someone else’s.
Many sectors require 24×7 operations. Mission-critical workloads can be challenging to move. Huge systems have been built over the years and may interconnect many departments. If you break them down, you have to think about everything that will be affected and the integration required to build something new.
While it’s easy to focus on the disruption, businesses should emphasize forward momentum to enable incremental, impactful change.
Success isn’t just about speed; it’s about moving at a pace that allows for controlled agility.
2. Have you aligned your cloud strategy with long-term business plans and built in security and compliance?
In deciding whether to shut down data centers or take a hybrid approach, consider compliance requirements, data needs, security issues and ultimate goals.
Unisys helps organizations with cloud migrations and did a large-scale cloud migration of our own. These initiatives often include broader application rationalization, consolidation and modernization, SaaS adoption for common functions like sales and workforce management and addressing compliance requirements. As a result of such initiatives, the total cost of ownership is down, and CISOs aren’t in fire-fighting mode due to security and compliance.
Embed security into your cloud strategy rather than addressing it as an afterthought. Cloud misconfiguration due to human error remains the top cause of data breaches in the cloud. Organizations that fail to factor security compliance into their strategies upfront may pay dearly later when they run afoul of compliance requirements and incur steep fines.
3. Are you automatically reaching for the low-hanging fruit?
Some of the applications you may think are the easiest to move to the cloud actually aren’t the applications you should focus on first. The low-hanging fruit rule doesn’t work here.
Instead, think about what cloud applications will deliver the greatest business impact. Consider starting with those rather than the applications you think are easiest to address.
What business outcome are you trying to achieve? Is it about innovative new services? Cost savings? Agility? Quicker releases? Scalability? Once you answer these questions, it will become clear where to focus resources.
4. Have you identified the resources and structure you need to be successful?
Assess what talent and technology you need to be successful. Develop and recruit multifaceted talent. Evaluate and embrace new operational models to be successful with your cloud transformation.
A cloud center of excellence (CCOE) is a centralized governance function for the organization. It acts in a consultative role for central IT, business-unit IT and cloud service consumers. It can serve as a catalyst to consolidate thought leadership, strategy and multi-year plans for your cloud transformation journey.
5. Have you selected the right cloud transformation partner?
Choosing the right partner to guide your cloud journey is crucial. Opt for one that can maximize value using your preferred cloud service provider(s) and technologies. This approach helps you avoid being restricted to specific cloud service providers or software suppliers.
Look for a partner with a network of relationships with various service providers and vendors. This enables you to implement a multi-cloud strategy, allowing you to select the best service providers tailored to your unique applications and business needs. Many enterprises working across multiple geographies often find settling on a single public cloud infrastructure provider challenging. A survey revealed that many public cloud users work with two or more providers.
Select a partner offering comprehensive services, covering everything from strategy development and implementation to continuous operations, optimization, and evolution. Such a partner will be more accountable throughout your cloud journey. They should provide agile teams for migrations, modernization and operations and flexible contracts that let you prioritize according to your business requirements. The agility of such teams is crucial for rapidly adapting to shifting business needs.
Remember, regulation should not be a barrier to cloud migration. Even sectors with stringent regulations are making significant progress with cloud adoption.
The time is now to establish or enhance your cloud strategy, ensuring you don’t fall behind. It's essential for reaping the rewards of contemporary technologies like AI, containerization, edge computing and more. A well-executed cloud strategy is fundamental for improving customer experiences and driving positive business outcomes.
