Google Cloud was chosen as a catalyst for growth and innovation
Organisations have only begun to realise the full potential of the cloud as the pandemic ushered in a new era of remote and hybrid work. Out of it, we had the explosion of cloud technologies. A constant emphasis on digital acceleration and transformation has become part of innovation.
Businesses can significantly benefit from the cloud's unparalleled flexibility, performance, and speed, especially now that access is democratised, and options are limitless. Enterprises are moving applications, infrastructure, workloads, and data to the cloud, and slower moves have shown early adopter success.
As organisations look to the future, their ability to implement transformative technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual and augmented reality, quantum computing, and more will depend on their current cloud deployment strategies.
As organisations begin to offer digital solutions in the digital workplace, using public, multi-, and hybrid clouds is becoming increasingly common.
Farid Roshan, Altimeteric's global head of digital capabilities, says the mindset of the data centre in transition results in high equipment acquisition costs and difficulty in acquiring talent to support data centre maintenance.
Numerous organisations waste valuable time and energy focusing on managing infrastructure rather than building products that bring value to customers.
In his opinion, public cloud platforms allow IT teams to focus on building innovative solutions and attract highly skilled talent to develop products that drive business growth while reducing IT total cost of ownership.
Cloud Adoption Strategy
A cloud adoption strategy requires an action plan. Cloud adoption can cause unexpected delays and failures in transforming organisations if the cloud strategy is not well understood throughout the organisation.
Understanding cloud migration goals and executing a leader's cloud strategy and action plan allows businesses and IT groups to merge their annual and quarterly goals.
Users should understand that cloud implementation is not a one-time initiative but requires a continuous investment by managers, processes, and technologies.
Cloud strategy's primary purpose should be rethinking product development to simplify the project ecosystem and reduce the touch points needed to deliver products.
Multi-Stakeholder Strategy
Users cannot consider the cloud in isolation, which means organisations must adopt agile frameworks, security policies and controls, site reliability design, and data platforms in their creation. These elements must be implemented as part of the journey to maintain the effectiveness of cloud adoption.
A successful cloud adoption plan should involve multiple stakeholders, and organisations should be involved from the top down. It all starts with the CEO, CTO and CIO, and the platform owner or cloud administrator, who directly oversees the execution of the implementation plan.
Depending on the business's unique needs, the CIO or CRO, cloud architects or engineers, site reliability engineers, or other IT service managers should also be involved. A cloud consulting team would be ideal for the plan because it would be a centralised function working across IT functions to build the framework.
Cloud Skills
There are many learning opportunities for people looking to improve their cloud skills, both open-source and paid. However, implementing this learning plan should include HR and operational areas to ensure that training objectives align with the company's strategic goals.
Organisations that want to adopt the cloud successfully need critical roles such as transformational leaders, cloud managers, and architects. These leaders must define a new way of working, work with enterprise groups to assess the flow of cloud services, and implement intelligent cloud strategies.
These roles are critical in defining cloud strategy, roadmaps and building awareness, and helping teams transition to a structured cloud while constantly looking for ways to enable a self-service culture.