Cloud is not Mission Impossible. In the ever-changing IT world, the cloud can be successful for only and only if you have strategic “blueprint” for your cloud journey. Even before that, you should be aware of all the pre-requirements for making that strategy. Know the in and out of cloud adoption strategy.
According to a survey, 88% present cloud users were not the first to adopt cloud and 29% were last to adopt cloud technology. The reason is they never had a crystal-clear cloud adoption strategy.
What really cloud adoption is?
Cloud technology is changing the fundamental understanding of how business works. Enterprises are leveraging the cloud to re-invent business models and make conclusive decisions with the help of this transformational wave, brought about by cloud. You can perceive cloud adoption as a strategic move for reducing cost, risk and achieving scalability. Successful cloud adoption does not only depend on choosing the right cloud vendor, a perfect set of technologies or greater infrastructure. Though these decisions are also important, true cloud adoption goes hand in hand with technical and organizational requirements of a business as well. Cloud adoption can be successful if one truly accepts the cloud as a way of innovation for the business model.
If you thoroughly analyze what is required for your own business, you will notice that your personalized strategic moves are different from other competitors. But there are certain aspects that you should go through before even thinking about cloud adoption.
Why is it important?
Every business, small or large, should make a cloud adoption strategy that is closely related to their business model. Cloud adoption strategy helps you focus on factors that are often neglected in the excitement of new technology adoption. Most of the organizations end-up cursing cloud vendors for higher pricing, inefficient resource consumption and complex infrastructure. In fact, such organizations failed to map out a proper cloud adoption strategy.
The full value of cloud comes from approaching cloud not as different tactical decisions but with a holistic strategy. This strategic approach lets you view what cloud has to offer for your business growth.
Know how it works
Before even thinking about which basic cloud services to use, make sure you have focused on critical factors. If not, here is your perfect approach for cloud adoption strategy.
1. Assessment:
Presently, every employee in an organization favors cloud adoption (and why not). But the problem lies in the fact that nobody knows how to. So in the first place, you must assess the opportunities and challenges of employing cloud in your business strategy. The depth of assessment depends on your business requirements.
You can assess other players in your business domain by checking how they have successfully adopted cloud. This assessment will surely make an impact on your profit charts.
Everybody watches Netflix and an interesting fact is that it is one of the most influential players in the cloud domain. Netflix took seven years to migrate on the cloud. They made all basic to major changes in their infrastructure to adopt cloud more efficiently. Netflix knew that cloud is the future. They assessed and made a cloud adoption strategy to adapt to technology changes.
2. Planning:
Now after brainstorming all your business requirements, you can plan your cloud strategy. IT leaders should cloud platforms and services that are suitable for their industry and should be updated. They should also select whether they should go for private, public or hybrid cloud.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform or any other cloud vendor, choose which fits best. Don’t get frightened about how to choose the best suitable cloud.
Read here and choose wisely: How to choose the best suitable Cloud?
3. Migration:
After assessment and planning, focus on cloud migration because here are most of the organizations’ cloud adoption strategy fails.
For cloud migration, IT leaders should establish mitigating risk strategies. The foremost factor for cloud migration is expertise. IT leaders should have expertise in all the technical aspects. To name a few they should know about servers, software and data storage to scale your business in future.
4. Optimization:
Although all the organizations need to follow above-mentioned steps for cloud adoption strategy. But they will also need to optimize that strategy. You might have new experiences with opted cloud services from what you have forecasted. This is because you encounter new insights about cloud services when they are in full use. Such encounters will lead you to make changes accordingly in your cloud adoption strategy.
If you avoid common mistakes during cloud adoption, you have an edge over others. Don’t make mistakes what others are making, read here: Top Mistakes To Avoid During Cloud Adoption.
Even after taking the first step towards cloud adoption, enterprises keep lingering around the ways to manage, secure and optimize their cloud but fail miserably. The best solution to all your cloud problems is, to begin with, a suitable Cloud Adoption Strategy.
Doesn’t matter whether you are on the early or later stage of cloud adoption, the above strategy applies to all which is subjected to required changes.