Getting Smart About Cloud

Blog Series Introduction

In 2009, I co-authored a paper on cloud computing in the public sector. Cloud was a relatively new concept back then, although some public sector organizations had made early moves into cloud computing (e.g., Singapore). At the time, cloud computing represented a major shift from more traditional ways of thinking about the delivery of IT resources. Cloud computing offered many potential benefits, including cost savings, economies of scale, workload scalability, as well as sustainability benefits. The barriers were the usual suspects and included security, privacy, interoperability, and business continuity.

So, 13 years later, did cloud adoption efforts within the public sector deliver on the promised benefits (e.g., cost savings)? Were governments able to maximize the anticipated benefits associated with transitioning to the cloud? If not, what do public sector organizations need to do to maximize benefits? And how did governments overcome the barriers? 

The Government of Canada (GC) has made progress related to cloud adoption and policy development. For example, the GC published a Cloud Adoption Strategy and several updates. The GC has also issued the Direction on the Secure Use of Commercial Cloud Services: Security Policy Implementation Notice and the Direction for Electronic Data Residency. These paved the way for Protected B data to be hosted in the public cloud. There have also been many other steps along the path. However, the adoption of cloud has progressed at a different pace across departments.

I am a Principal Director within Accenture’s Technology Strategy & Advisor (TS&A) practice and I have spent the last decade helping clients turn their technology investments into strategic assets that produce results. I plan to co-author this series with another Accenture colleague – Talal Abdelmutti. Talal is a cloud leader at Accenture, focused on helping clients develop cloud strategies that enable digital business and promote secure, efficient and scalable adoption of cloud. Talal has extensive experience developing cloud architectures and cloud delivery capabilities - from cloud financial management to cloud engineering, security and operations. Talal and I have been working in the digital government and cloud space for many years and each of us brings a unique perspective. Our primary lens will be cloud adoption within the Government of Canada.

The purpose of the Getting Smart About Cloud blog series is to take the complex topic of cloud and to break it down into smaller, more manageable parts. And while a lot of ink has been spilled on cloud, we believe that there remains a sizeable divide between business and IT as it relates to cloud. Also, most of the blogs/publications we’ve read on this topic tend to be narrowly focused and speak either to a business or IT audience but not both.  

We want to make this series relevant to senior business leaders interested in the business benefits of cloud adoption– value, cost, and innovation, as well as IT and operational leaders interested more in the delivery and maintenance aspects associated with the shift to cloud. We want to reach out to the senior government leaders who are driving the scope and pace of digital transformation and cloud adoption. We believe our readers will find the series both interesting and worthwhile to read.

This blog series is intended to be more of a conversation or dialogue about cloud rather than a one-way flow of information and we encourage feedback. Also, we appreciate that our readers will be at different levels of digital/cloud maturity and therefore there will be no one-size fits all. We want the blog series to be relevant regardless of maturity level.

In our first blog, we will go back to first principles, namely - what do we mean by cloud computing, how has it evolved over time, what is digital government and how does cloud computing enable it. In future blogs we will explore various cloud concepts or sub-themes like benefits, challenges, strategy, operating models, security, cost, process, talent, leadership, and culture. We will also bring in various experts and vendors to share their thoughts on a particular topic. While we have ideas about topics of relevance, we welcome the input of others to help guide the development of the blog series.

Stay tuned for our first blog in the series in the coming weeks!