Nowadays, it’s rare to run a firm without some cloud assistance. However, businesses still appear to make certain typical errors when developing a cloud strategy. Here are a few examples.
Making IT the Only Aspect of Your Cloud Strategy
A successful cloud strategy requires the backing of IT outsiders, according to Gartner, which made this observation this week at its IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference.
Business and IT leaders should refrain from creating an IT-centric strategy and then attempting to “sell it” to the rest of the company, according to Marco Meinardi, vice president and analyst at Gartner. “Business and IT should work together on an equal basis to define the cloud strategy.”
Technology for the sake of technology is typically not a smart idea, continued David Smith, vice president and analyst at Gartner.
When taking any action, Smith advised TechNewsWorld to have a clear understanding of the business rationale behind it.
“When people see it, they think, ‘It’s technology. Let the technologists handle it,” he added. “What happens is that people then concentrate on the adoption phase, which is about how you do things and when — which is different from the strategy component, which is on what you’re doing and why,” says the author.
Shirking a Plan of Exit
Because they don’t see themselves moving away from the cloud, organizations usually lack an exit strategy from a cloud provider. Furthermore, developing such a plan might be challenging. Smith noted that many avoid asking questions because they know they won’t like the answers they receive.
Vendor lock-in was a major concern in the early days of the cloud, but it’s less so now, according to Tracy Woo, an analyst at Forrester, a global market research firm with its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
According to Woo, “some organizations would seek to be tied in with a certain vendor to get to market faster or to take advantage of specific price or services.”
She continued, “Organizations should always be considering a plan B, whether that be cloud or some other option, but,”
Despite this, she noted, “it’s uncommon to read of businesses that truly do entirely sever ties with a particular cloud provider.
Mistaking a cloud implementation plan for a cloud strategy
Plans for cloud strategy should always be developed by organizations before adoption or deployment. Business and IT management select the strategy plan during the decision phase, which also determines the organization’s use of cloud computing. The cloud strategy is then put into action using a cloud deployment plan.
According to Smith, calling something a strategy when it’s really an adoption plan results in hundreds of pages of information that the business people won’t be interested in, scaring them away.
According to Meinardi, “a effective cloud strategy should be a concise and easily digestible document, comprising of 10 to 20 pages or slides.”
Key objectives, targeted income targets, new revenue streams, and new business or traction that the firm wants to develop utilizing the cloud are some areas Woo says are frequently ignored in a cloud strategy plan.
Too frequently, she added, businesses rush to adopt cloud technology and just consider the deployment process without considering the bigger picture or current strategy.
Comparing a Cloud Strategy to a Full Cloud Migration
According to Meinardi, many company and IT leaders would hesitate to develop a cloud strategy since doing so would require them to exclusively employ cloud computing. In order to define their cloud strategy, he suggested that businesses retain an open mind and collaborate with a non-cloud technology specialist, such as an enterprise architect.
On the other side, some businesses think the transition to the cloud is easy.
According to Jack E. Gold, founder and senior analyst of J.Gold Associates, an IT advice firm in Northborough, Massachusetts, “One of the main issues that firms have is that they assume they can take what they’re doing on-prem and just shift it to the cloud.”
“You need to rethink your apps, solutions, architecture, and strategy to achieve the maximum advantage from a cloud implementation,” Gold told TechNewsWorld.
“They also don’t do a great job deciding which apps should remain on-prem and which should go to a cloud environment,” he added.
“There are lots of apps that will never move to the cloud,” he continued. “They’ve been running for 10 years. They’re going to be running for another 10 years. Why bother?”
Outsourcing Development of Your Cloud Strategy
Gartner does not advise it, as alluring as it may be for some business and IT leaders to delegate responsibility for developing a cloud strategy. It claimed that it was too crucial to outsource.
When you might require outside knowledge during the adoption phase, Smith said, it makes sense to outsource. But what actually occurs is that it’s quite simple to place yourself in a situation where your vendors are defining your approach.
Gold said, “If you want to seek out assistance from someone who is knowledgeable in their field, that’s OK, but you need to monitor what they’re doing.” You shouldn’t just chuck a check over the wall, she said. Even if someone else is assisting you in putting your plan together, you still need to be involved in comprehending it.
Woo concurred. Unless the entire strategy is being outsourced with zero guidance from the firm itself, she added, “I wouldn’t argue it’s a poor idea to outsource strategy.” “When they assist with planning and implementing a cloud strategy, large Global System Integrators really perform a significant piece of that work.”
Comparing “Cloud First” with a Cloud Strategy
According to Gartner, a “cloud first” strategy makes the public cloud the go-to location for anybody looking to create or deploy a new asset.
Meinardi argued that “cloud-first” doesn’t always equal “cloud exclusively.” If business and IT executives embrace a cloud-first philosophy, their strategy should determine the exceptions to the default decision that will allow apps to be used in locations other than the cloud.
Data with strict residency requirements (data can’t leave a specific region or country), data that must be physically close to where it is processed for latency or performance reasons, and data where egress is too expensive, such as in big data applications and AI, are some assets that Woo noted are best placed outside the cloud.
Believing It’s Too Late To Devise a Cloud Strategy
It’s never too late to develop a cloud strategy, according to Gartner. According to Meinardi, if businesses push cloud adoption without a plan, this would eventually result in opposition from those who are not on board with the plan’s main tenets and guiding principles. Because of this reluctance, cloud adoption will be slower and the cloud project as a whole might be in jeopardy.
