Which Are the Best Approaches For a Successful Cloud Adoption

The World is rapidly moving towards automation, and cloud adoption brings organizations from all sizes and industries a number of benefits. Moving workload from on-premises to cloud is efficient, secure and cost-effective. That is why cloud adoption is considered as a positive first step toward digital transformation. But transforming to a cloud-based infrastructure requires more than just an understanding of the technology.

However, it is important to understand why you are adopting cloud, what value it is providing for your business and what are the best practices in cloud adoption, as well.

The Role of Cloud Computing in the Enterprise

As mentioned above, cloud computing solutions offer organizations increased flexibility, accessibility, and scalability, among many other benefits. A lot of companies rely on connectivity, and cloud computing can provide rapid, simple, and trustworthy communication for members of the team all around the globe. Cloud computing also allows for quick data access and critical business applications from any place with a reliable Internet connection across the world. Moreover, the cloud includes a built-in data backup and restore system that ensures your company’s data is completely secured.

To be competitive, and to bring an added value to the business, each company should engage with the digital transformation process when required and to upgrade their old IT infrastructure into a new one. Beyond adopting cloud solutions, a company should integrate new forms of technologies that speed up, automate and improve business, such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT). Considering that these technologies require heavy computational power and storage space, Cloud Computing comes as a solution to integrate these technologies.

Companies should exploit the advantages of cloud computing to set up robust digital transformation frameworks, cloud enables innovation by giving a compatible set of APIs (Application Programming Interface) for developers.

Cloud provides analytics, functional programming, and low code platforms, it could be essential for informed decision-making. This enables a company to launch enterprise-ready products rapidly. For company agility, growth, and success and to create great consumer experiences — it’s critical to embrace cloud computing and disruptive technologies.

Best practices for successful cloud adoption:

Before adopting Cloud computing, you should know where to start. Here we identify several essential elements of a successful cloud adoption strategy:

?1.Define clear business objectives

First of all, you should clarify why are you migrating to the cloud? What demands or challenges are you addressing? What business goals are underpinning your digital transformation? These are some of the basic questions you need to answer before you begin with the adoption. These clarifications will help you define key business drivers, identify problems that need solution, and set clear priorities.

2. Start With an End-to-End Assessment

The next step towards a successful cloud implementation is assessment. It is critical to understand where you are today and where you want to reach through the cloud. That us why it is important to start with assessing your current environment, predicting the future state and identifying organizational readiness, risks, opportunities, and costs with moving to the cloud.

3. Determine a Deployment Model

Successful cloud implementation also depends on choosing the right cloud model for your business. There are various models available, so it is critical to understand the need and approach for each and select one that best fits your business needs.

For example, with IaaS (Identity as a Service), you can get access to virtualized computing resources over the internet. With PaaS (Platform as a Service), you can have a third-party provider deliver hardware and software tools for application development. PaaS is well known for its speed and accuracy. The environment consists of resources such as servers, data centers and other equipment all which are virtualized.

And SaaS (Software as a Service) is the most commonly used option for businesses in the cloud market. The reason is that it is easily accessible – all you need is an internet connection and a browser. Indeed, Software as a Service has a lot of benefits to offer - it can help your business save money, time, and human resources. By eliminating problems like software maintenance and incompatibility, SaaS provides streamlined focus and greater productivity.

4. Plan and Follow a Cloud Governance Framework

The success of your cloud adoption depends mostly on your ability to ensure accountability, control, and governance. The development of a cloud governance framework provides secure adoption of services and features. It ensures that the right programs, systems, and tools are in place to move workloads to the cloud. It also enforces the correct policies to make sure that your employees are trained well enough to use the cloud effectively and safely.

5. Implement Automation Frameworks

Looking through these best practices, we speak of automation as a core principle of implementation. At the core of cloud adoption is the automation of infrastructure. The purpose is to have each application implemented and deployed through code. By automating the provisioning, configuration, and management of your cloud-based infrastructure, you will able to save valuable time and resources to minimize disruption and to drive mission-critical innovation.

Nowadays cloud adoption is growing faster than ever. There are many advantages for moving to the cloud, but it is important to have a strategic approach to get the full range of benefits of digital transformation. A well-defined cloud implementation plan that considers industry-wide best practices will definitely ensure success during the transition.