Six Elements for Effective Cloud Adoption

CIOs are facing the tough challenges of cost optimization and driving business value due to COVID19. Some businesses are struggling to accelerate their cloud adoption. Many companies need support in structuring their overall hybrid multi-cloud strategy.

What should these CIOs do during these challenging times? What strategies do they need to drive cloud success? Well, the journey to the cloud is a multi-year journey. It is not a one-time event.

Here are six elements you need to accelerate your cloud adoption:

1. Align your cloud adoption with your business need.

• There is no better time than now to accelerate your cloud adoption. Due to COVID19, businesses are reconfiguring their business models due to customer demands. Starting with business priorities is the key to maximize business value.
• COVID19 demands a frictionless customer experience. Look for initiatives that enhance customer experience (CX) by leveraging advanced analytics and AI tools available in the cloud. When you turn data into insights through analytics available on the cloud and find augmentation-driven use cases, it directly increases your firm's revenues.
• Investigate modernization use cases driven by transforming customer-facing applications.
• Treat security and compliance as a business value driver through your cloud governance model.
• The software licensing model is dead. If you do not have a "SaaS" first strategy, you miss opportunities to play in the ecosystem to drive business value.
• Have an abundance mindset regarding the breadth of cloud use cases-frictionless experiences, data-driven insights, operational excellence, and business process reconfigurations.

Cloud computing is a strategic imperative to compete in the age of AI. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

2. Enforce a new cloud operating model.

• Do agile right by shifting from project teams to product teams with an interdisciplinary mindset.
• Adopt Agile, DevSecOps, and SRE practices as you build new applications for your new business processes by assembling cross-functional product teams.
• Organize interdisciplinary teams around products instead of projects. This is so essential as you build your AI-infused cloud operating model. Augment talent with managed services and consulting teams.
• Build a true self-service and continuous delivery models.

Cloud options impact the CIO's operating budgets as they move from CAPEX to OPEX. CIOs must work closely with their CFOs as they plot out their entire cloud journey. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

3. Treat every workload as an opportunity for cloud adoption.

• Develop a timeline to move your workload for the cloud journey based on its tech debt and price/performance characteristics. Investigate and identify the right cloud technology for each of these workloads -storage, database, analytics, messaging, and integration services.
• Embrace a distributed cloud architecture mindset based on your workload characteristics. Your latency needs may drive an on-premise cloud at the edge. Your compliance and regulatory requirements may drive a private cloud.
• Plenty of choices out there. "Infrastructure as a service" is a new normal. Private cloud is a sweet spot if your main drivers are around infrastructure simplification, reduce data center space, simplify operations, agility, & compliance requirements.

Business innovation rides on the cloud and edge. You are not innovating if you are not moving your workloads to the cloud-native world. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

4. Build a holistic Cloud COE with an adaptive governance model.

• Investigate business applications and workloads, including mainframes that are expensive to operate. Create holistic cloud patterns, reusable frameworks, and roadmaps to guide your application rationalization and modernization journey.
• Cloud migration is not a straightforward journey. Application architecture for cloud-native environments is fundamentally different from legacy business application architecture. "Like for Like" cloud migration will increase your cloud spend. Legacy applications are not architected to leverage cloud-native benefits.

Best-in-class cloud governance is all about architectural decisions, agility and competitive advantage. Cloud governance is a team sport. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

• Periodically assess the effectiveness of Cloud Governance processes and outcomes to exceed regulatory demands (MRAs).
• Establish cadence to evaluate newer cloud security technologies such as homomorphic encryption and periodically update cloud security strategy—repeatability, measurement, and reporting matters.
• Tailor the cloud governance model based on the cloud model. A RACI chart is an effective tool to map stakeholders for the respective cloud models (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS). Drive for the least amount of governance using RACI.
• Certain applications are more suitable for serverless architecture, while other applications are more suitable for containers. There is room for VMs as well. Poor architecture decisions will lead to high cloud spends.
• Accelerate cloud training by launching cloud certifications and badge programs around cloud skills-Automation, Agile, DevSecOps, and SRE.

The higher the maturity of your cloud governance model the better the collaboration with development, testing, and business value driven alignment. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

5. Revisit your cloud strategy quarterly.

• Just focusing on latency and availability, SLAs are not enough. Constantly benchmark your products with the market. Identify what worked and what did not work through continuous feedback loops.
• Evaluate the fit between external cloud trends and internal cloud adoption plans. Identify mis-alignments between internal and external cloud trends. Make adjustments to your cloud strategy to innovate at scale.
• Your business would like to conserve cash and costs until growth returns due to COVID19. Effective cloud cost management practices should feed into your cloud strategy. Improve your cost management disciplines and competencies.

Making faster decisions matters, and your cloud strategy is the foundation to drive business value faster. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

6. Rethink your cybersecurity strategy due to the distributed cloud ecosystem.

• The future belongs to customers and the experience economy. Customers and their data are everywhere, including applications. Traditional security models, such as DMZ no longer work. Drive DevSecOps and “policy as code” practices.
• Embrace frictionless ”shift left” practices to improve compliance posture, reduce security admin costs, and reduce vulnerabilities.
• Keep control of your data and avoid SaaS lock-in through shorter contracts as business change is faster than you think. 
• Bring security where ever there is code and data. Accelerate zero trust architecture.

Your security incidents drop drastically as you accelerate "shift-left" practices, and DevSecOps. -Khwaja Shaik, IBM Thought Leader

Question

What strategic actions are you taking to accelerate cloud adoption? Have you redefined your procurement strategy? Where are you in aligning your security strategy with your cloud strategy?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

For professional insights into complex issues, join the conversation by tweeting Khwaja at @Khwaja_Shaik or connecting with him on LinkedIn.

ABOUT KHWAJA SHAIK

Khwaja Shaik is the award-winning global IT Executive with 25+ years of business technology leadership with IBM, Bank of America, PwC, and GE. He has a worldwide reputation and a proven track record in driving digital transformation and the newest innovations.

As IBM’s Thought Leader, Khwaja’s role is to help clients stay ahead of the digital disruption curve by leveraging Design Thinking, Cloud, IoT, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Quantum Computing. Khwaja is among the most exceptional IBMers appointed with the rare distinction of IBM Academy of Technology member. Top 100 technical leaders providing the direction of IBM with innovation that matters.

As a strong proponent of talent development, Khwaja serves as IBM’s Design Thinking Coach for IBM’s Developer Jumpstart Program, IBM’s BlueHack Mentor driving innovation, and IBM’s Blockchain Mentor to spur the blockchain ecosystem.

Khwaja also serves as McKinsey Global Institute’s Executive Panel Member, MIT Sloan CIO Forum Member, Gartner’s Research Circle Member, MarketsANDMarkets Advisor, and HBR’s Advisory Council Member driving global thought leadership.

As a global influencer, Khwaja frequently blogs on exponential technologies at IBM, LinkedIn, and Twitter. With his passion for interfaith and nurturing global talent in STEM, he serves on the Advisory Boards of Interfaith Center of Northeast Florida and Museum of Science & History, and the University of North Florida’s Computing Advisory Board.

Recipient of outstanding service awards from the University of North Florida, Bank of America, IBM, and Indo US Chamber of Commerce of Northeast Florida. He is frequently interviewed for industry insights or cited in the news, Thought Leadership POVs, and blogs on disruptive technologies.

Khwaja holds an MBA and Engineering degree. He is a frequent speaker on exponential technologies at various forums, including the CIO IT & Security Forum, MHI Supply Chain Conference, IIT Hyderabad, and Indo US Chamber of Commerce of Northeast Florida.

More details on Khwaja’s career and thought leadership activities could be found via Linkedin, Khwajashaik.com or follow him on Twitter @Khwaja_Shaik

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