Consider a scenario,
“We failed cloud migration due to our haphazard approach to adopt cloud too soon.”, said the CEO.
The team of IT executives sitting in the meeting room, brainstorming what we have missed into planning that we failed migration. Don’t land on this path and started thinking to change your strategy later. The best approach is to start from assessment for cloud adoption.
In our introductory article, we also acknowledged “Assessment” as the foundation of the cloud adoption strategy. It is better to know what you need instead of wasting capital on additional resources. The assessment itself gives you an edge over your competitors because it helps to identify cloud objectives and smoothens the process of migration on the cloud.
You have to do the extensive research and include every tiny requirement in your assessment charter.
Spoiler Alert!!
Moving forward in your cloud adoption without any assessment is as good as jumping off the cliff with a blind-fold.
Having an assessment strategy in place will help you discover whether your organization is ready for cloud migration or not. This highlights all the areas that you need to work upon before cloud migration, thereby laying out a fair estimate of the investment you are supposed to make. Various organizations use the assessment approach as the backbone of their cloud decisions. This even helps them to land upon a good investment.
Since we don’t want to jump forward without acknowledging the benefits of assessment in the entire cloud adoption process, here are the most obvious ones:
- Align your business and cloud strategy.
- Understand which cloud solution is beneficial for your organization.
- Understand the approach of moving to the cloud.
- Identify the cost-benefit of migration to cloud infrastructure.
- Identify the resources that you require to move forward to cloud transformation.
- Minimize the risk of cloud migration.
Still a bit skeptical about whether you can reap all these benefits out of the assessment? Then, you should probably dig into your business strategy and form a strong foundation for your cloud journey.
That said, there are five simple steps that you should consider implementing during your assessment phase. Take a quick look at these enlisted steps:
- Each level of the organizational structure should understand cloud technology. From C-level executives to associates, each and everybody should be familiarized with the idea of cloud computing. Ask yourself this “Do the organization acknowledges the benefits of cloud computing or not?”
- “Why do you need cloud computing?” Know the objectives that you want to meet with cloud technology. You should have a crystal-clear set of goals. The identification of objectives will lead you to the next step.
- Get a thorough assessment of your infrastructure mapped out by IT executives or cloud experts. This will let you find which cloud services you need to meet your objectives. You can compare different cloud service providers (CSPs) by checking which CSP provides the required services. Also, identifying the services you need will prove as ‘win-win’ scenario for your cloud transformation.
- Aligning your business objectives with infrastructure requirements will let you forecast the investment. You should understand that cloud computing is an investment, not an expenditure. Now measure all the investment you must make as a forecasted investment.
- Have you gotten your assessment sheet filled up? Fit this last piece of assessment puzzle into your cloud adoption story. The last thing that you need to realize is that “Do you have all the required resources like IT expertise, investment, etc.?” If not, list those required resources so that these factors will not hinder your cloud journey.
Easy theory to imbibe, isn’t it? Taking the measures mentioned above into account will give you a holistic picture of how your cloud adoption journey would look like. Besides, you can go in-depth with your assessment strategy irrespective of what business you are operating.
Catch us with our next article on “Planning for Cloud Adoption Strategy.”
Stay tuned…