DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE CLOUD STRATEGY
In the present age of digital transformation and competition to provision improved services to end customers most of the organizations today are dependent on cloud platforms that are perfectly aligned to business growth and fluctuating market demands. While greater business benefit can be manifested by adopting appropriate strategy it is extremely important to take care of the events and actions associated in this journey. Flexibility to support growing business needs, data security and availability of services (through proper disaster management) are the three key factors that organizations are focusing while transitioning to cloud based infrastructure. Every organization has their own culture and defined working methods but it is important to envisage the changes that need to be brought to maximize return on investments.
There are several experts in the market who can guide an organization to select the most cost-effective framework that can host and provide the services, avoid risks and fits well with organization’s business projections. However, it is essential to build internal technical capabilities and competencies to drive the “move to cloud” mission successfully. The primary objective here should be value creation and not the process of delivering value. The value of leveraging the right cloud partner is only truly achieved when both parties understand and honor their responsibilities and expectations.
Below are the functions that need to be considered while developing the strategy.
1. Identifying stakeholders who would be associated to execute, operate & maintain the strategy and defining their responsibilities
2. Identifying areas of possible threat & Security vulnerabilities and defining mechanism to address these efficiently
3. Explore, evaluate and select the technology / tools that will enable to implement the strategy successfully
Organizations can opt to move non-critical functions to cloud to begin with as proof of concept (POC). Having experienced success with their initial deployment, they may embark on a wider roll-out of hosted services to either complement or replace their existing infrastructure. Cloud computing can benefit companies in several ways depending upon their size, scale, sector and strategic goals.
