Always on, always connected, and always working hasbecome the new mantra for enterprises. Many organizations have settled on a cloud-first strategy. As the C-suite races to out-innovate their competition, CIOs have taken the mantle to lead the innovation initiatives within their organizations to have full-proof Enterprise Cloud Strategy.
With the onset of significant digital transformations, more and more organizations are turning to enterprise cloud solutions for optimizing costs, driving innovation, and enhancing agility. To ensure these outcomes, it is crucial for CIOs to develop enterprise cloud strategies for successful transformation and adoption of enterprise cloud software. Therefore, aligning cloud strategies with business strategies has been a mantra for CIOs for quite a few years. Yet, despite the apparent straightforward nature of the endeavor, many CIOs struggle to achieve that
alignment.
Furthermore, the rapid rise of digital technologies and transformation has significantly raised the bar — now, CIOs must find synergies and multiplier effects, not just business alignment, and that has a big impact on the creation of IT strategies. No longer an insular exercise by the CIO, senior management, LOB executives and CIOs work together to create and co-own new IT strategies. CIOs need an inclusive, agile and systematic approach to IT strategy development to meet the ever-changing needs of the business. Enterprise Cloud Strategy in the digital era are undergoing a transformation to become an integral part of enterprise digital business strategy.
Even the stats speaks that the global cloud computing market size is projected to reach USD 1554.94 Billion by 2030.
The increasingly growing enterprise cloud adoption proves how nearly every organization is using the cloud today for achieving the flexibility and scalability that come with it. The unpredictable economic conditions, rapidly shifting market conditions and technological advancements have led to more and more organizations investing in enterprise cloud transformation for optimizing business operations and gaining a competitive advantage. This made possible for organizations to enhance the quality of cloud deployments and extend them to new use cases. However, building and implementing cloud computing strategies is imperative to ensure success.
In this article, we will talk about some considerations involved in developing a strong enterprise cloud strategy in alignment with business objectives.
Enabling the Enterprise Cloud Roadmap: Considerations for CIOs
CIOs must prioritize business continuity and IT security to be able to pivot to cloud efficiently. The time has created a need for stress-testing theapplication and infrastructure landscape to bring more stability and resilience.
Business-critical processes that rely heavily on manual data must be transformed with the help of digital tools and SaaS solutions. CIOs mustfacilitate this transformation across business processes, and train existingincumbents to convert them into a virtual, cloud-ready workforce.
Consideration 1: Define your objectives and goals in the enterprise cloud strategy.
It is crucial to define your objectives and goals before you embark on the cloud journey. Define the objectives and goals you wish to accomplish through enterprise cloud adoption. A comprehensive understanding of goals and desired outcomes can help teams to customize the cloud strategy for ensuring alignment with the overall business vision.
The objectives can range from enhanced operational efficiency and increased scalability or flexibility to reduced IT costs and expedited time to market cloud solutions. Knowing your objectives clearly and planning the cloud strategy accordingly can help guarantee harmony among all decisions, initiatives, and goals.
Consideration 2: Create a dedicated enterprise cloud strategy team.
A dedicated cloud strategy team can help ensure smooth enterprise cloud adoption. Some primary responsibilities of the cloud strategy team may include:
- Developing a roadmap and creating a checklist. The team can create a strategic plan and a checklist that provides an outline for the necessary considerations required for successful enterprise cloud adoption with implementations aligned to the ultimate business objectives.
- Apt and quick decision-making. The team can serve as the primary decision-makers for different aspects of the enterprise cloud transformation journey, such as choosing the right cloud deployment model, cloud service providers, or migration strategy. However, no decisions must be made without rigorous analysis and evaluation of available information.
- Communicating with stakeholders. The team can be responsible for communicating with stakeholders to inform about the benefits, progress, and potential challenges of the enterprise cloud transformation journey. It should be up to the cloud strategy team to decide whether certain stakeholder feedbacks are practical enough to consider or not.
- Evaluating existing apps and software along with implementation planning. The cloud strategy team can be responsible for determining which applications are suitable for enterprise cloud migration and which should be kept on-premises. A detailed implementation and migration plan must fall under their purview of responsibilities, ensuring that the experts are providing a well-defined approach to address the potential obstacles of implementing enterprise cloud software while facilitating successful execution of the strategy.
- Analyzing and managing new developments in the enterprise cloud transformation journey. As the organization’s cloud landscape evolves, the cloud strategy team can continuously analyze and assess new developments to adapt the strategy as needed for optimization and effectiveness.
Developing a team with such key responsibilities can help organizations to navigate their enterprise cloud transformation journeys with expertise while ensuring alignment with their goals and objectives,
Consideration 3: Thoroughly analyze the existing state of applications and software for migrating to the enterprise cloud platform.
A comprehensive evaluation of your organization’s current state of IT infrastructure, data assets, and applications must be performed to determine their suitability for cloud migration. Which applications are suitable for migration and which ones pose potential threats during migration? You must identify dependencies, regulatory obligations, and limitations of your existing software and applications that can influence the enterprise cloud transformation journey in any way.
For instance, maximum control needs to be ensured around mission-critical applications, which is why they are better suited for on-premises execution rather than enterprise cloud platforms. It is a necessary step to minimize potential risks. Such decisions must be made by the cloud strategy team, but this is something that cannot be done unless a comprehensive evaluation of the organization’s existing IT infrastructure is performed.
Any application which brings a set of risks that outweigh its potential benefits through cloud migration must be kept on-premises. Migrating it to the enterprise cloud platform would only pose greater challenges that can be incredibly risky.
Consideration 4: Map the enterprise cloud strategy to deliver maximum business value and speed in minimum time.
Today’s volatile business environments call for organizations to possess the necessary agility to capitalize on opportunities way ahead of their competitors for maintaining the profitable edge. Cloud computing can offer a valuable means to enhance business agility for increased chances of success through enterprise cloud platforms. It is important to ensure that the cloud strategy aligns with the following priorities:
- Strategy and Innovation, to explore how enterprise cloud solutions can address business challenges and foster innovations effectively.
- Security and Governance, to ensure implementation of adaptable governance frameworks for accommodating various risk profiles and demands within the enterprise cloud platform.
- Migration and Mobilization, To ensure the establishment of necessary structures and support systems for successful enterprise cloud adoption to facilitate the organization’s transformation.
Consideration 5: Develop a comprehensive migration plan within the enterprise cloud strategy.
A comprehensive migration plan that provides a step-by-step framework of shifting applications to the enterprise cloud platform is essential for smooth migrations and implementations. Such a plan must be developed after considering various factors like complexity, business value, and potential cost savings. A well-defined timeline with appropriate sequencing and communication strategy can help facilitate a seamless migration to the enterprise cloud platform with minimal disruptions.
The cloud strategy team must identify potential risks proactively to develop a comprehensive migration plan that addresses the challenges of the migration journey and ensures smooth transitions to the enterprise cloud platform.
Consideration 6: Prioritize a primary provider in the enterprise cloud strategy and establish their role in case of multi cloud architectures.
Today’s business landscape consists of most organizations with at least one successfully integrated cloud infrastructure provider into their operations. However, recent developments may cause your enterprise cloud company to look for a way to expand their cloud capabilities to incorporate a second cloud provider for certain specific use cases.
Multi-cloud strategies can introduce complexities and added costs along with the incredible flexibility that most organizations want. Effectively managing it requires a clear workload placement strategy for the enterprise cloud solution. You must select a preferred and primary provider, and then continue to incorporate additional providers as per needs or business requirements. Such an approach can help ensure an organized and systematic expansion of cloud providers, along with ensuring optimized performance during the enterprise cloud migration and cost-efficiency of the enterprise cloud solution.
Consideration 7: Reskill and upskill your teams.
A plan to reskill and upskill your teams must be a critical part of your enterprise cloud strategy. Your teams will witness a significant shift in routine IT operations post the implementation of the cloud strategy, which may also result in changes to the roles and responsibilities within departments.
Reskilling and upskilling initiatives can help proactively ensure that teams can conveniently adapt to the new environment and the emerging enterprise cloud solutions. As new cloud-driven roles emerge and take precedence, it is necessary to employ this approach for reduced burnout, overall support for workplace goals, and increased productivity.
It can help break silos between teams, as reskilling and upskilling of staff can help equip teams with the emerging responsibilities that come with changing roles and evolving enterprise cloud solutions.
Consideration 8: Continuously evaluate and refine your enterprise cloud strategy.
You must continuously monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to gauge the cloud implementation effectiveness along with the influence of your enterprise cloud solutions on business outcomes. Some practices that can help you to continuously evaluate and refine your cloud strategy are:
- Seeking feedback from diverse stakeholders, including IT teams, leaders, and end-users.
- Identifying key areas for improvement in the enterprise cloud solutions and addressing challenges regarding the same.
- Staying informed and updated about the latest cloud trends, best practices, and emerging technologies for improvement.
- Regularly revisiting your cloud roadmap to ensure alignment with the ever-evolving business needs and updating enterprise cloud solutions according to technological advancements.
A Note for CIOs!
Enterprise IT is increasingly fueled by the cloud. But IT leaders who don’t know how to blueprint for success are in for frustration, failed implementations, and could-be cost catastrophe. Enterprise cloud adoption continues its meteoric rise, with IT leaders increasingly going all-in on the platform.
CIOs also often make the mistake of not implementing enough automation. Experts says that the best practices in enterprise cloud transformation include automating everything from the deployment of infrastructure and applications to management and security. Most outages or security breaches are the result of manual misconfigurations. Also, there are times when CIOs fail to plan for the shift in culture and skills required to devise and implement a successful cloud strategy. The cloud functions differently than traditional IT systems, and an Enterprise Cloud Strategy must not only require new skills but a change in thinking about how to design and manage the environment.
Let’s Plan Out Your Cloud Journey Today!
When you go to the cloud, it’s like moving from a bicycle to a high-performance vehicle, and you can’t assume that what you did before will work the same. With high-intensity extra performing vehicle comes added advantages but superfluous responsibility too.
No one is always prepared for uninvited problems and sudden expenses. Imagine you are nearing capacity on your current servers. Now imagine that your marketing team runs a promotion, and you get a significant boost in traffic. Your current servers are already running at near capacity, meaning you don’t have the availability for these additional users. So, what do you have to do? To accommodate the additional availability, you’ll need to buy a new server. new servers are expensive. Making these large capital investments every few years adds up. Not only does this cost time and money, but what happens once the promotion is over and your traffic levels return to normal? You might still be utilizing a small amount of resources from the new server, but for the most part, it’s going unused. This type of situation is common for businesses with seasonal traffic or that are growing.
In the cloud, you don’t have to worry about these costs. And you won’t have to worry about the unexpected cost of a broken server. With the cloud, you can scale up or down whenever needed, and you only pay for the resources you use, making it extremely cost-effective.
Enterprise cloud strategy development necessitates the employment of a strategic and methodical approach to ensure a cloud-centric culture within the enterprise cloud company. To create a strong and robust cloud strategy, organizations must establish clear objectives, design a comprehensive enterprise cloud migration plan, prioritize primary providers, and continuously evaluate the strategy for refinement. This must be performed while addressing the crucial aspects like security, compliance, governance, and cost optimization to ensure effective alignment of the enterprise cloud solution with objectives for long-term success.
At Uneecops we understand every business has a unique journey to success, and it is defined by the road it takes. When your company grows rapidly, settling up with a legacy infrastructure does not cut. That’s why your business needs a holistic cloud strategy and a partner to leverage breakthrough technologies, scale rapidly, and deliver success. Simplify Your Cloud Journey With Uneecops Business Solutions.
