Cloud transformation: don't stop at the foundations

Over twenty years ago, I was working in Canary Wharf when the next set of towers after 1 Canada Square started to be built. I had the opportunity to watch the foundations of new buildings being laid, and to see the surprising contrast between the amount of time it took to lay those foundations, and the speed with which the new buildings climbed to the sky. For months it seemed that nothing was happening - but that ‘nothing’ was what made the rest of the building possible.

In Cloud transformation, we usually start by building foundations: basic concepts and constructs such as landing zones, tools and security policies, accompanied by essential training, and proven by pilot workloads. This first phase can be difficult, as it requires you to make some of your most important choices and do some of your most important work at the time when you have least experience and capacity. As with any profound change, you will experience setbacks and surprises as well as success, and you will need to adapt your plan. It is also wise to seek help.

Laying these foundations is important, but it can become such a focus in the early days of Cloud transformation that it can lead to one of two traps. First, it can lead us to believe that, once we have laid the foundations, we are done: we can simply open our Cloud platform for business and expect everyone to turn up and use it. Second, it can lead us to believe that the benefits of Cloud transformation are limited to those which arise directly from the foundations: reduced cost and risk, and increased flexibility, security and resilience of infrastructure.

I believe that when we set our goals for Cloud transformation, we should look far beyond those delivered directly by foundations. I’ve captured a few thoughts in the very rough and ready diagram below:

This diagram is based on three fundamental beliefs.

First, that the way in which companies use technology has the ability to determine their competitive success.

Second, that differentiation through technology comes from the disciplines of software engineering (the ability to create functions which serve customers and run the business), data science (the ability to inform decisions and make predictions) and technology architecture (the ability to put components together in sustainable and flexible ways).

Third, that the advent of Cloud platforms creates the best place for these disciplines to be exercised in the service of customers and business success. Used well, they have the potential to provide unconstrained computing and storage capacity, allow your entire technology environment to be managed as software, and, perhaps most importantly, to break down the walls between your datasets.

Viewed in this way, the laying of Cloud foundations does much more than improve the security, safety, reliability, efficiency and effectiveness of your technology infrastructure: it creates the environment in which you can exercise these differentiating capabilities and determine the future success of your enterprise. Laying those foundations takes time, can be difficult, and may create impatience and frustration in your stakeholders. Throughout all these challenges, we must remember that we are not laying foundations for their own sake, and we are not finished when they are laid: we still need to climb to the sky.

(Views in this article are my own.)