Estamos cada vez mais cientes da necessidade de transformar continuamente os nossos negócios para nos adequarmos às mudanças nas necessidades operacionais e de negócios. A necessidade de ser competitivo, escalar rapidamente e minimizar os riscos impulsionou a adoção da cloud numa taxa nunca antes vista. Algumas organizações estão a começar a migrar para a cloud, com foco na migração de ativos digitais existentes. Outros visam uma transição mais profunda para a cloud-native e muitos já estão a analisar como adotar uma arquitetura multi-cloud. Independentemente do nível de adoção e maturidade na cloud, há um traço comum: a necessidade de uma estratégia cloud sólida.
We are more than ever aware of the need to continuously transform our businesses in order to adapt to the changes in operational and business needs. The necessity to be competitive, scale quickly and minimize risk, have driven cloud adoption at a rate never seen before. Some organizations are just starting to shift to the cloud, focusing on the migration of existing digital assets. Others target a deeper transition to cloud-native, and many are already analysing how to adopt multi-cloud architectures. No matter the level of cloud adoption and maturity, there is one common thread: the need for a solid Cloud Strategy.
WHAT IS A CLOUD STRATEGY?
A cloud strategy defines the outline for the role cloud has in the organization and provides a coherent approach to cloud usage, resources and costs optimization.
It is a part of the corporate digital strategy and its goal to use technology to improve business performance, creating competitive advantages.
As the company’s digital assets and goals evolve, so should the cloud strategy.
- KEY ASPECTS TO CONSIDER
A common misconception about cloud strategies is that they only need to focus on the technical and financial aspects to be successful.
All of the departments of a company are stakeholders of the cloud strategy. It’s necessary to have a global awareness of what is planned and include the inputs of all stakeholders into the definition of the strategy.
The bigger the impact on the organization, the more important it is to include a change management plan that follows the transformation from the beginning to end and beyond.
For the strategy to succeed we must make sure there is a deep alignment with the businesses top-line goals, but also take into account the staffing and skill sets necessary to operationalize it.
Another key aspect to include are alternative and fallback scenarios in case of an unforeseen impediment that can take many forms, such as technical, time-based or even financial.
- HOW CAN I MAKE THE MOST OF MY CLOUD?
As the organization’s cloud adoption increases and the advantages it brings become more evident, the following go-to topic is usually how to optimize costs.
The nature of cloud allows for many types of financial optimizations. For example within the traditional IaaS scope, some of the most common strategies include having reserved resources, stopping them during off-hours and dynamically adapting capacity to the actual loads.
But it is the adoption of multiple scopes of cloud use that has the most potential to optimize costs in the long run. In fact it will allow gains that go well beyond the financial side.
It is necessary to include in the transformation roadmap of applications and services the use of the multitude of options cloud has to offer, such as serverless computing, microservices, native PaaS or dynamic orchestration, to name a few.
This drives organizations to become more agile with cloud-first architectures, enabling them to explore scenarios such as multi-cloud adoption, once again minimizing risk and opening the door to new services and financial optimizations.
The App Modernization strategy must be closely aligned with the Cloud Strategy. It is important to not forget that the cloud resources are there to enable the applications and services that are running on them.
- REMEMBER TO INNOVATE
Cloud is one of fastest growing areas and one of the most innovative as well.
Innovation is something all cloud adopting organizations should include in their strategies as well.
It is necessary to explore the new services cloud providers release on a regular basis, to properly prepare and plan for the next wave of digital transformation.
Take a look at our Cloud Enabled Company webpage and send us an email to [email protected], so we can help you with your strategy and to make the most of your cloud.
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