Part 1 – How Successful are Cloud Operations?

The pace of cloud adoption continues to accelerate as businesses reap the benefits of speed, flexibility, reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness. While initially it was IT departments who pushed for a migration to the cloud, the company’s leadership has come to realize the many positive effects of cloud platforms: accelerating business innovation, transforming business functions, enhancing communication and collaboration, and increasing productivity.

Pricing models also differ as, according to Microsoft Azure, “The cloud shifts your focus upstream to operating systems, applications, and data digital assets.” When companies run their own data centers, they’re operating on a capital expenditures (CapEx) model – there’s a high upfront investment in hardware, software, and facility costs. Moving to the cloud will shift a business to an operating expenditures (OpEx) model, where more items are pay-as-you-go or subscription-based.

Some may think migrating to the cloud is a simple, one-off exercise. However, this is far from true. Without a rigorous plan from day one to tackle the complex issues of cloud adoption, the journey to the cloud can quickly create problems. Unforeseen costs, lack of scalability and availability, weak security controls and compliance violations are all factors that can cause corporate stakeholders’ concern.

It may also not be obvious that migrating to the cloud does not mean the end of all your on-premises infrastructure. these “traditional” data centres will be around for a considerable time, creating a hybrid environment and further complicating decisions and investments.

Given that cloud needs are tied so closely to other business operations and objectives, the journey to the cloud is different for every organization. Some organizations start with a very well-thought-out strategy, while others may be responding to a request from the business or an emergency such as the coronavirus pandemic and the shift to remote working.

There are essential factors to be adopted for a successful cloud operation such as:

·?????? Which are those?

·?????? How are they helpful?

·?????? How to secure a company’s assets in the cloud?

·?????? How to maintain good rapport and communications with the cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, Alibaba, etc)?

·?????? How to build a cloud center of excellence.

Stay tuned for Part 2 to learn answers to the above queries and more about these!