According to a recent Forrester report, clients stated that they plan to move as many as 80 percent of their applications to the cloud over a five-year timeframe. While this number is already significant, it carries more impact considering large enterprises can have thousands of applications across their business. We know that cost-savings, operational efficiencies, and faster speed-to-market are all benefits of moving data centers, workloads and applications to the cloud. However, for some organizations, cloud migration can be a daunting task without the right strategy in place.
At Dell Cloud Services, we’ve seen cloud adoption strategies shift from a technology-first line of thinking to a business-forward approach. The foundation of all cloud strategies should be grounded in business needs, and what the ideal future-state looks like for the organization. Developing a strong cloud adoption strategy is not just a functionality and interoperability story, it’s a business story.
I have found that the best cloud adoption strategies are founded on four key principles:
- Grounded in business objectives. Understand the organizations short- and long-term strategic goals, then identify the challenges that need to be addressed before selecting the appropriate technology solution. In order to accomplish this task, capture all feedback on priorities, needs and hurdles from teams across the organization. Because input will likely vary depending upon employee role and position, this activity will help you develop a holistic solution, which addresses more than just the most apparent problems.
- Subject to IT guidance and governance. Understand the technical and strategic skillsets you will need to deliver on the vision. Are your in-house IT members engaged? Do they have both the capability and capacity to help deliver the vision? Address any new needs or integration must-haves before beginning work on the new solution, keeping in mind your current systems may not be optimal for your end state.
- Committed to flexibility. Take a hybrid approach to cloud; relying on more than one cloud provider. Consider which workloads would be better-optimized on-premises, or in a private or public cloud. Also, decide if you will operate your own platform internally or offset this work with a managed service provider. At different times, different approaches are appropriate.
- Preparing for the future state. Look across all your environments, and map out groups of technology that may have a similar path to the cloud — instead of taking a case-by-case approach for every application and workload. Then, prioritize which to move first, knowing not all can be done at the same time. When thinking about the long-term work and skill-sets needed to manage and maintain your evolving infrastructure, consider how you will staff these efforts. You may find that outsourcing can be an efficient option in the long run.
To hear more about building a cloud approach for your organization, watch this brief video from Dell Services and Forrester Research to learn:
- How to prioritize applications and workloads for the cloud
- Common challenges and solutions associated with cloud migration
- Which cloud approach is right for your use case — public, private or both
Contact us today to learn how Dell Cloud Services can help your business succeed in the path to cloud.