From Promise to Value: Achieving Cloud Success in the Mid-Market

CLOUD MIGRATION GUIDE FOR MID-SIZE ENTERPRISES

For most organizations today, cloud migration and adoption promise a wide range of benefits. Almost all of that promised value comes from innovation and optimization in addition to the potential for cost reduction. Emerging drivers also include mitigating the impacts of climate change.

The pandemic has accelerated the already fast pace of cloud adoption across a broad spectrum of industries. Almost half of employees in enterprise roles will?continue to work remotely in coming years , fueling the growing needs for hybrid and remote work solutions.

More than half of enterprise IT spending will shift to the cloud by 2025, according to a recent?report ?by Gartner. Gartner also?estimates ?that 85% of companies will embrace ‘cloud-first’ models to execute digital strategies by the year 2025.

Mid-sized enterprises continue to struggle to capture the value promised from using cloud technologies as a tool for business transformation.

As CIOs and other decision makers at mid-size enterprises review how the range of cloud capabilities can move their organizations forward, the key point usually isn’t a question of “if” but “how fast” and “to what extent.”

However, tech leaders aren’t getting the value promised from cloud because of an array of barriers. In?PwC’s 2021 US Cloud Business Survey , findings from CIOs and other C-suite leaders revealed a?huge gap between promise and value:??53% of?companies aren't realizing value from their?cloud investments.

Given all of the promised benefits, business and IT leaders-- especially those in mid-sized enterprises -- continue to struggle to reap the value promised by using cloud technologies as a tool for business transformation.?

In this guide, we'll dive into why so many mid-market organizations still struggle to optimize value from their cloud transformations, what are the key obstacles in their way, and how to overcome them.

In this guide, we'll address the following questions:

• What are the promised benefits of cloud adoption for mid-size enterprises?
• What are the top challenges in the way of successful cloud migration and adoption?
• How do I choose the right cloud solution partner to achieve success?
• How should your organization get started?

Benefits of Cloud Adoption for Mid-Size Enterprises

Cloud adoption provides solutions for mid-sized companies to manage shifting work models due to a range of emerging geosocial and political factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, cloud migration delivers myriad long-term internal benefits. Some of these include improved system resiliency and security, reduced cost and modernized workload environments.

?Here are some of the most commonly cited benefits of cloud adoption.

?

Readiness for Remote / Hybrid Work

As workplace environments increasingly shift from traditional office spaces to a new hybrid world of work, employers need to be prepared to pivot their operations to accommodate this new expectation in the workforce. More enterprises are?embracing a hybrid work model , however many don’t yet have a clear plan for how it will work.

Shifting to the cloud allows organizations to ditch the local area network (LAN) servers that tether personnel to in-office workspaces in favor of more flexible alternatives. This swap paid dividends to companies that had already migrated their workloads to the cloud by the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scalability and Agility

Scaling a business using legacy environments is time consuming, space-consuming and expensive. As operations increase, your on-premises infrastructure will need to expand to accommodate data servers and networking equipment. Likewise, scaling down operations can result in an excess of underutilized resources.

Cloud technology enables organizations to automatically add capacity to meet surge demand in response to increasing customer usage, for example. Resources can easily be offloaded, increased or otherwise adjusted according to performance. This allows you to quickly scale your operations to accommodate growth in operations, market expansion and new offerings.

This capability has been particularly crucial during the pandemic for many businesses, especially those expanding e-commerce. Cloud flexibility and speed also enables more personalized customer experiences and capabilities to?optimize field services .?

More Robust Security

All organizations and industries face the growing risk from cyberattack, and three-quarters of leaders?consider cyber threats one of their most strategic concerns . Managing security concerns internally is cost-prohibitive and ultimately ineffective for many mid-sized companies — particularly in a cybersecurity landscape where cybercrimes are increasing exponentially each year.

Cloud providers like?Microsoft ?and others have invested billions of dollars in resources to detect and eliminate cybersecurity threats. Mitigation efforts include round-the-clock monitoring and developing new encryptions to thwart potential data breaches before they have a chance to happen.

Savings in Legacy IT Costs

Cost and performance of operations is also a major reason why IT leaders move infrastructure and data to the cloud. Adopting cloud can eliminate much of the maintenance cost associated with data servers and other traditional IT requirements. Most companies that adopt cloud will be able to dramatically reduce their IT operations, and organizations in the mid-market have opportunity to streamline how IT services are delivered.

While adopting cloud can cut a large portion of your IT spend, you’ll need to ensure your cloud spend is optimized to fully reduce costs over legacy environments.?Cloud solutions like Microsoft Azure ?offers?cost optimization ?to help customers reduce redundancies, shut down unused resources, capitalize on underutilized resources and scale resources to match performance requirements.?

Resilience and Recovery

Cloud infrastructure promises superior resilience in comparison to legacy workload environments, assuming a?cloud-ready operating model ?is adopted. Historically, companies have resorted to customer service agents to address user experience (UX) concerns during events like outages on physical data server locations.

Additionally, cloud is insulated from disaster scenarios, including fires or floods — which have the potential to destroy physical servers, rendering valuable data unrecoverable.

This benefit can also apply to more innocuous scenarios — if your laptop is lost or stolen, entering a username and password can allow you to recover its data without having to replace anything but the device itself.

A Well Planned Cloud Strategy is Essential

Now that we understand the potential benefits, how do we ensure we can actually realize the promised value?

The first step is to begin with a well-planned?cloud strategy .

Cloud transformations are much more than technology initiatives. They are strategic, long-range journeys and must be closely aligned to overall business direction rooted in a purpose to enable a wide range of business needs. These needs might include fundamental changes in the business model, entering new markets, increasing agility and resiliency, as well as adding capabilities to launch new innovations and products more quickly.

For organizations looking to migrate to the cloud, having a well-planned cloud strategy will make all difference on the way to achieving success, and is perhaps more important than the implementation work itself.

In general, most organizations will need to choose their path to cloud from a wide spectrum of approach choices as they consider the best way to move from on-premise to a cloud infrastructure. For some, the 'lift and shift' approach, or moving applications and data from on-premise to the cloud essentially un-changed, may be appropriate. For others, a 'cloud-native' approach, or a fundamental redesign and refactoring of technology, operations, skillsets and culture may be in order.

Regardless of the approach you take, having a well-planned strategy up front is the first key to success. This includes embracing well-defined, cloud-native principles, including the use of APIs, micro-services, and a modern data architecture to enable a more agile and resilient application infrastructure and data security program.

For some organizations, this may also include the creation of a?cloud center of excellence (COE). According to?Gartner ,?cloud COE “is the best-practice approach to drive cloud-enabled transformation," and brings all of the key business functions and units together to set cloud policy, and serve as an internal source of best practices in service provider selection, cloud architecture design and workload placement.

Cloud Adoption Challenges for Mid-Size Enterprises

Despite the many benefits of cloud transformation, making the shift can present several challenges, many of which may only become apparent well into the cloud migration journey. Here are some of the most common challenges we see facing mid-sized companies in moving to the cloud.?

Lack of Expertise in Cloud Migrations

Our clients commonly site lack of the right skills and expertise as a top concern in their digital efforts. A Gartner?survey of IT leaders ?ranked talent shortages as the largest obstacle preventing the adoption of emerging technologies like cloud. Most mid-sized companies are not equipped with a large staff of IT personnel with the capabilities to carry out cloud migrations internally.

Many of these problems come down to logistics concerns — e.g., application sizing — that mid-market companies are unable to address on their own through comprehensive analysis. Additionally, companies without IT staffs will be unable to audit their migration to prevent overspend or scale their migration accordingly.?

Lack of Experience Managing Cloud Services

Once the migration is complete, your company will need an expert in cloud service management to maintain daily operations, including tracking new updates and features. This will ensure that your cloud service can be effectively used as a tool for growth, rather than a sinkhole of redundancies and unused resources and features that create additional cost.

Additionally, you will need to ensure that your service-level agreements (SLAs) are being met, which could be hampered by things like underutilizing resources. These concerns can often be addressed by outsourcing part of your operations to a third-party cloud partner that offers end-to-end cloud transformation services.?

Security and Compliance Concerns

Despite the strong emphasis on?cloud security ?shown by leading cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure, many companies still consider cybersecurity to be a barrier to cloud adoption.

No digital initiative is impermeable to cybersecurity threats — particularly when human error potential is a risk factor. To protect your company’s assets, it’s imperative that you have the capabilities in place to ensure comprehensive cybersecurity measures.

Most mid-market companies don’t have the resources to address security concerns internally, so many will opt to work with a solutions partner that offers cybersecurity as part of their services.

In addition, compliance issues have become more complex in recent years, notably General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for general markets, and the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) for industries serving defense and government. As cloud consumption increases, the more scrutiny it attracts from regulators, increasing the risk of compliance breaches for organizations that do not have personnel on staff to manage these concerns.

For mid-sized enterprises who cannot afford to hire full-time staff with this level of expertise, working with a cloud partner can help to navigate the complicated maze of privacy and security regulations.

How to Choose the Right Cloud Solution Partner

A cloud solution partner provides services to assist in the strategy, design, implementation and ongoing management of a cloud migration and additional solutions that can be delivered through cloud services.

Working with a cloud solution partner provides the benefit of leveraging the expertise of a provider whose business model is devoted to cloud-related services and solutions, and has completed many similar projects, and even in your specific industry.

Businesses should look for the highest levels of cloud competencies, such as those earned by a?Microsoft Gold Partner , for?Microsoft Azure and related cloud services . Certified competency in cloud technologies gives you the added confidence that your cloud initiatives will be guided and/or implemented by highly skilled professionals that have successfully completed several cloud migrations and related projects.?

Also consider whether the cloud partner you hire has the right credentials to carry out a complex IT transformation, such as weaving in?business and IT strategy ,?data governance ,?security and compliance ,?app and process modernization ?considerations to meet the demands of the transforming enterprise.

Here are some of the factors to consider when choosing a cloud partner.?

Strong Results in Cloud Transformations

When it comes to the complex process of cloud migration and IT modernizations, you will need to ensure that you’re working with a partner that specializes in cloud — with experience and credentials that demonstrate the quality of their services. Additionally, it is best to seek out a partner with a proven track record of successful projects and high levels of client satisfaction.

At Plus+, our certified cloud consultants have deep technical expertise and industry specific knowledge from industry and 20+ years of cloud project completions. Our ability to anticipate and avoid common pitfalls helps enterprises with limited cloud experience overcome their biggest implementation challenges. We’re proud to have outstanding rates of client retention and satisfaction. We measure our success in terms of?client results ?and their outcomes.

Certification in Your Preferred Cloud Platform

Depending on where you are in your cloud journey, you may still be reviewing the range of cloud platforms, or you may have already chosen the best platform based on your existing tech stack. Either way, you should consider choosing a cloud partner that has extensive experience in the platform that suites your business.

As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Plus+ has extensive experience in Microsoft cloud solutions, including?Azure ,?Dynamics 365 , and?Power Platform . We provide comprehensive advisory and implementation services to move data and workloads to the?Microsoft Azure Cloud ?and integrations with other cloud services.?

Industry Specific Experience

Industry specific business needs commonly call for very specific needs for cloud capabilities. And each industry has its own special set of challenges such as disruptive competition, regulatory compliance or business model complexities.

With our deep cross industry experience, Plus+ has earned the trust of industry leaders by delivering high impact?cloud strategies and enablement services ?for over 20 years.

Plus+ uses a tailored approach with strategy, design, migration, integration and adoption services to fit industry specific needs. We approach each partnership with curiosity and industry perspective to get to know your business to ensure smooth implementations and maximize user adoption. We work closely with clients to dig into their unique challenges so that each approach is focused to current needs, yet pliable to scale into the future.

Cloud Security Capabilities

Cybersecurity is top of mind with many enterprises, especially as they embark on or accelerate into their cloud journey. Leading cloud platforms such as Microsoft Azure invest heavily to put?cloud security ?front and center.

You’ll want to choose a cloud partner who can guide you to choosing and implementing the right mix of cloud security capabilities to enable your desired state information security strategy.

Plus+ employs a?comprehensive approach to cybersecurity ?to help our clients understand, address and actively manage the risks they face to successfully operate their business in a secure cloud.

As an approved Registered Provider Organization (RPO) by the?Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification Accreditation Body (CMMC-AB) , Plus+ believe cybersecurity requires a strategic approach. We consult with mid-sized companies to design programs that will help identify cyber threat vulnerabilities, as well as manage and control risks to prevent data breaches.

We will also offer guidance on global cyber threats and use our capabilities to provide end-to-end protection against future cybersecurity concerns.

Ready to Achieve Your Cloud Advantage?

Knowing where to start and how to get the most value from your cloud journey can be difficult. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, we have earned the trust of industry leaders by delivering high-impact cloud strategies and enablement services for over 20 years.

Our deep technical expertise combined with cross-industry knowledge helps enterprises get the most return and overcome their biggest implementation challenges.

We share in our client’s aspirations to deliver hassle-free technology implementations that meet or exceed business objectives. That is why we follow a proven approach to cloud migrations and software development to ensure a smooth, high confidence engagement every time.

At Plus+ our skilled and experienced Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform experts dig in with your teams to explore, design, architect, migrate, deploy, and support solutions that optimally connect your business and customers.

Speak with one of our cloud solution advisors ?to get started or to accelerate your journey to cloud advantage.