CROSSING THE CHASM

AVINASH GUJJE, PRACTICE HEAD – INFRASTRUCTURE, CLOUD BOX TECHNOLOGIES, ON HOW TO MANAGE THE PUBLIC CLOUD JOURNEY DURING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Adopting a public cloud platform and creating a strategy on how to use business applications from the public cloud are the first basic steps into digital transformation. By adopting and adapting to the public cloud, an organisation prepares for new processes and new operations with significant business benefits from undertaking this journey.

Clearly the paths to public cloud adoption are unique for every organisation and are influenced by the culture of the organisation and its business expectation throughout the cloud journey and through digital transformation.

In order to maximise the business gains from adopting public cloud, the underlying costs of migration to the cloud need to be managed and cannot reflect a runaway or uncontrolled migration.

If the end to end public cloud migration journey is showing evidence of being a time consuming and complex exercise then IT and business decision makers should re-evaluate the journey focussing on business gains with measured investments into cost and time.

Once the enterprises has established the best fit path and journey for public cloud adoption and migration, the journey needs to be accelerated to move the workloads to the public cloud. The application workloads that continue to be managed from a private cloud are those required for compliance and to manage ongoing IT complexity while ensuring the IT organisation operates with a degree of agility as well.

Business gains

During the public cloud migration both business and IT need to monitor the operational gains and cost savings. This is especially useful during the present day business challenges of unpredictable and unplanned rising costs and eroding market demand. Gains from cloud migration can take place through any of the following: - Slow time to market, limited resources, lack of interoperability

Public cloud adoption can help to overcome these challenges and is therefore an enabler of scalable digital business.

- Burden of maintaining and operating enterprise hardware and software

By moving workloads to the public cloud, internal skilled resources can focus on innovation in multiple areas and increase the internal value generated from cloud migration.

Since the technical and non-technical aspects of every enterprise are different, there is no established formula to define what can determine a successful public cloud migration journey for an enterprise. Instead, top executives need to work with IT decision makers to define which IT capabilities will give the maximum business benefit and market differentiation to the enterprise, while managing the costs and time for completing this journey.

Planning the journey

Here are more recommendations on how business and IT can prepare for the public cloud journey.

Prioritise workloads Public cloud is a form of IT outsourcing. Some public cloud applications will drive business gains through improved revenue, profit, market differentiation. Others will improve internal operations through agility and efficiency and access.

Public cloud applications that are not aligned with market facing operations and instead boost internal operations need to be selected based on improved functionality, improved ease of use, and vastly better user friendly interface. How you begin your cloud journey depends on your starting point. Another area that may need revision is relationships with suppliers and their processes.

Announce the benefits Public cloud adoption generates benefits in all areas of the enterprise. IT decision makers need to announce the possible benefits and prioritise them in the journey. These include agility and scalability, business innovation, geographic reach, cost optimisation, amongst others. And for the IT organisation: increased system availability, shorter development and project times, technical flexibility, improved security.

Manage IT infrastructure As public cloud reduces the challenges of managing IT, IT decision makers must be cautious in not replicating complexity internally in other areas. As an example, the scale and complexity of a private cloud need not be increased to match the scale of public cloud operations.

IT decision makers have a challenging time ahead, driving down soaring costs, ensuring positive growth in business fundamentals and market differentiation, reducing IT complexity across a global recessionary market. Understanding the guidance above can help them manage the ongoing situation.