Cloud Nirvana is yet to arrive.

It has been a while since I discussed with any customer on whether or not Cloud is a good idea. Almost everyone in business has done their MVPs, taken the lessons learnt and gone to Cloud in last five years in some shape and form.

The question, therefore, is no more Why Cloud.

The question is no more also, Which Cloud.

The question is How Cloud?

Enterprises have begun their Cloud journey in one of the two directions.

• Cloudification of Infrastructure and moved up the stack towards Applications
• Cloudification of Applications and moved down the stack towards Infrastructure

This is quite logical as anything new, more so technology, needs to be tried and tested for its value and success, and only then cascaded across.

Most enterprises have failed to recognize why they decided to go to Cloud in the first place.

Cloud, like any other technology, is an enabler, of a business outcome.

And how are business outcomes achieved? Business Outcomes are achieved via a proven Business Process, and optimizing it in all possible ways, and by further adding to it Speed. And this is exactly where Cloud fits in.

Cloud is technology at speed.

• Cloud enables new hardware to be procured at a click - that is speed.
• Cloud enables deployments at a click - that is speed.
• Cloud enables release approvals at a click - that is speed.
• Cloud enables real time metrics - that is speed.

All of this today is happening at all Enterprises in some shape and form but in silos.

The day an enterprise decides to build its DevOps deployment pipelines based on a a logical, verticalized business process, that is when and where the Enterprise will unlock the full magic of Cloud. Has your Enterprise begun this journey yet?

P.S. - If you are worried about Costs in Cloud, you need to read my previous post here.