Over the years, people have said a fair amount about cloud.
Andy Jassy, the CEO of AWS, once stated that: “cloud is the new normal”. Zach Nelson, who at the time was CEO of NetSuite described cloud as “not only the next business architecture, it is the last business architecture. Once you can access your data on any device, at any time, from anywhere, what else is there?”
And Mark Hurd, Oracle’s CEO once claimed that moving to the cloud is not a matter of if, but, rather, when. Noting that companies are moving quickly so it’s important to start your cloud journey now so you don’t get left behind.
The benefits of cloud are clear, from flexibility, cost savings and disaster recovery to increased collaboration, work from anywhere and automatic updates, to name just a few. As such, it’s unsurprising that the use of cloud has become quite normal across all industries. But CXO’s shouldn’t be mistaken – your cloud journey is not always going to be smooth sailing. And with this in mind, making the decision to move to the cloud shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Below, we’ve put together a list of three things every business executive and their IT team should consider before embarking on their cloud journey.
Keep disruptions to a minimum by planning for change
In 2015, Gartner shared a staggering statistic about the rate of failure of private cloud implementations – an enormous 95% had gone wrong. This figure includes projects that were originally labelled “successful” but failed to achieve deliver value to the organisation in the long run. One of the main reasons that cloud fails to deliver the organisational benefits first predicted is a lack of change management. According to McKinsey, when people are truly invested in change, the project is likely to have a higher success rate. “People do not like change being imposed on them,” says Chris O’Brien, CIO at the Royal Shakespeare Company. “They don’t want to do things differently to create a benefit they can’t see. People want to know how it will benefit them and how it will improve their working lives. If you’re going digital, you must consider the impact on your people, both in terms of consumers and staff.”
Put the right structures in place to avoid conflict
Businesses eyeing digital transformation often face a tension between business and IT. Business tends to be more cautious, while IT teams generally favour moving quickly. To put it simply – if business and IT aren’t talking the same language, your cloud move will probably be riddled with unnecessary hurdles. By ensuring that your management team are adopting the same sort of processes as your developers, you’re creating understanding between teams and avoiding any potential miscommunications. Governance is part of this and should be communication with, understood and enforced by people across all aspects of your business.
Prioritise integration
In order to realise the benefits of cloud, which we detailed briefly above, all of your different solutions and platforms need to talk to each other. With proper system integration all existing software and solutions feed data into your cloud platform so everything is available in one place and there is only a single version of the truth. This is especially true for businesses with a number of different branches, systems and people. Being able to integrate all services into one platform makes it easier to grow and scale. The cloud also empowers remote employees, allowing them plug into key operational services from any location and at any time.
Want some help on your cloud journey? At 48Software, we have the experience and expertise to help.
