Searce Uncovers Secrets To Driving Intelligent Outcomes
- By Lachlan Colquhoun
- August 18, 2022
Every enterprise is embarking on a cloud strategy to achieve its technology goals. Gartner says more than half of enterprise IT spending in key market segments will shift to the cloud by 2025.
While scalability and cost might be the key drivers for cloud adoption, cloud migrations can fail to deliver the actual value unless done with the right vision. It is because enterprises miss out on some of the critical parameters around modernization, automation, governance, finops, and other cloud-native frameworks to realize the transformation.
Yash Thakker, the director of cloud consulting at cloud integration and implementation consultancy Searce, says that even for digital natives, where the company has particular experience and expertise, achieving cloud-led transformation goals can be more complex than simply spinning up servers and storage.
“The individuality of every firm requires finely crafted solutions based on their business model, go-to-market strategies, and how they plan to use solutions such as data analytics, AI, and automation,” says Thakker.
“Cloud adoption is not just a resource or a budget-related battle, but a mindset or a school of thought that looks at its adoption as a world full of possibilities, solutions, and opportunities.”
First consideration: Going beyond MVP
Cloud adoption requires careful planning at the outset, with an approach that considers not just the ‘minimum viable product’ approach to get the business into the market but takes a long-term view of what the company may need in terms of growing technology needs.
The key issues are the choice of platform, architecture considerations with the availability of several databases, server-based/serverless cloud technologies, and creating an outcome-led data strategy.
“In my experience, firms often begin with the mindset of just needing something that works, often picking the easiest or cheapest solution for their initial set of applications,” says Thakker.
“However, when their cloud adoption grows, and they start having to serve several applications and business units on the cloud, their tech solutions cannot keep up.”
With this in mind, companies must ensure they lay the right foundations for their tech stack from the get-go of cloud adoption and have a clear view of their strategy. He advises a “cloud agnostic” strategy because it enables flexibility and infrastructure architecture that can scale growth and guide technology decisions in the future.
Second consideration: Details, details, and details
A second key consideration, says Thakker, is to “mind the details.”
“Laying down the fundamentals of a company’s tech stack and having a robust, scalable infrastructure is great,” he says.
“But companies need to think about all the other details involved such as how security can be implemented, how automated the operations are, how easy it is for teams to utilize these solutions, and how much the entire process will cost.”
Not taking the right approach comes with significant risk. It can lead to a firm directing more resources to these areas further down the line, diverting the focus away from product development and growth.
Around 40% to 50% of a company’s budget typically goes towards technology, and if they build the right processes and develop the right strategies, then they can re-invest the gains from technology back into the business - but this requires clarity and efficiency from the outset.
“You could end up needing maybe three DevOps engineers to coordinate everything and ensure the right security measures are in place when ideally the company could just automate the pipeline and streamline the process,” says Thakker.
Stop looking for a silver bullet
A third principle in developing a cloud strategy is to consider all options. It is natural for enterprises to default to the popular and well-known cloud providers. Still, due diligence can find other independent software vendors with more appropriate solutions for a specific problem.
Some have particular expertise in accessing real-time data, for example, Fivetran, while others focus on data warehousing.
“The truth is that there is no silver bullet, there isn’t a strategy that can work for every firm, but there are ways that companies can go about the process to make it easier,” says Thakker.
“Cloud is a complex ecosystem, and it can be scary, but finding the right partners can be a big help and take out much of the pain.”
Lachlan Colquhoun is the Australia and New Zealand correspondent for CDOTrends and the NextGenConnectivity editor. He remains fascinated with how businesses reinvent themselves through digital technology to solve existing issues and change their entire business models. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/GOCMEN