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Introduction
With 94% of enterprises running on the cloud, having an effective cloud strategy is significant.
Moreover, 80% of companies have reported experiencing operation improvements after adopting services.
Companies wishing to accelerate business growth and meet the evolving market demands need cloud service adoption.
Having said that, before adopting cloud technology, having a concrete cloud strategy is crucial for successful implementation. Without one, you might face technical challenges and high monthly bills.
So, how do you plan an effective cloud strategy?
If you’re unsure about the steps to craft a cloud strategy roadmap, we’ve got you covered.
In this blog, we share the basics of cloud strategy, how it works, and 5 essential steps to develop a cloud strategy roadmap.
What Is A Cloud Strategy?
Acloud strategy covers a company's overall plan outlining the cloud’s architecture, development plans, and governance model. The strategy includes best practices, tools, and services to make use of when adopting a cloud solution.
The core principles to keep in mind when adopting and using the cloud are
- Trust
- Enablement
- Enterprise Risk
- Capability
- Cost-Benefit
- Accountability
Having a well-thought cloud strategy helps businesses
- Leverage cloud computing benefits
- Prevent pitfalls in the adoption journey
- Avoid costly mistakes
- Meet critical business milestones
- Achieve digital transformation objectives
- Successful cloud adoption and operation
Why Does Enterprise Need A Cloud Strategy?
Without a defined cloud strategy, organizations essentially be experimenting haphazardly with the hope of success. Instead, that can cost excess money, time, and resources.
On the other hand, a robust and clear cloud strategy prepares the enterprise to make smart and informed decisions related to cloud adoption.
Let’s explore a few reasons why enterprises need a cloud strategy:
1. Align vision and objectives
An effective cloud strategy helps organizations align their vision and objectives and understand the role of cloud environments in reaching the desired goal.
2. Become agile and save costs
Having a well-planned cloud strategy allows organizations to scale resources as per the requirements. It helps reduce extra costs by freeing internal resources for higher employee productivity, low attrition rate, workload, and customer management.
3. Right cloud platform selection
With a well-defined cloud strategy enterprises can clearly understand their business needs and goals, helpful in choosing the best cloud platform. Moreover, a clear cloud strategy helps estimate the cloud costs, scalability demands, compliance and regulatory requirements, and individual customer needs to meet.4. Identify a cloud implementation plan
A cloud strategy plan outlines the necessary steps and activities that a business needs to follow to implement a cloud solution. It provides a path to reach desired goals and essential information on the current operation state, challenges to overcome, and more.5. Offers Direction
A cloud strategy outlines clear goals and defines the path to achieving the future goal through effective implementation strategies for optimal effects.8 Steps To Develop A Cloud Strategy Roadmap
Step 1: Determine the company’s core requirements
Here are eight steps to follow when creating a cloud strategy roadmap:
Before beginning to create a cloud strategy roadmap, understand the company’s need for making informed decisions. Define what your business wants to achieve by moving to the cloud.
Common expectations of business when adopting a cloud service are:
- Quicker release of the product
- Maximizing operational efficiency
- Acquiring and retaining new customers
- Streamlining the decision-making processes
- Gaining a competitive advantage
To determine your business objectives, answering the following questions can help:
- What are our core values and purpose?
- How will we use the cloud service?
- What are our key metrics and KPIs?
- What are our customer expectations?
Step 2: Access the current and desired state
The next step is to assess the current and future state of business with regard to cloud service adoption to identify what change to expect.
Assess the current state of IT infrastructure, applications, data, security, governance policies, metrics, and more to evaluate cloud readiness, technical maturity, and business expectations with cloud adoption.
Based on the current state assessment output, assess the company’s desired state. The future assessment must include an architectural blueprint for future cloud technology platforms, network provisioning, application strategy, security posture, IT service management, service desk integration, shared service dependencies, and automation.
Step 3: Define roadmap to cloud vision and objective
How will you achieve your business objectives through cloud service?
Whether you want to expand your global reach, acquire new customers, or speed up your product release time, a roadmap will guide you toward the desired outcomes. Your cloud strategy should have a clear direction for meeting your cloud vision and objectives.
Step 4: Design cloud architecture and governance
The fourth step is to design a cloud architecture and governance framework to support your cloud vision and objectives and technical and operational needs.
Developing a cloud architecture includes designing a cloud network, storage, security and management components, cloud integration, migration, and automation processes.
Moreover, establishing a cloud governance framework will include defining cloud policies, standards, roles, responsibilities, and controls.
Step 5: Gap analysis
Gap analysis is essential to detect gaps and dependencies in proposed cloud solutions to ensure there are no barriers to implementation or migration plans.
To identify the strategic gaps, an in-depth assessment regarding cloud investment and architectural planning needs to be done to identify potential technology and IT workflow gaps and develop an action plan to handle such challenges.
Step 6: Risk assessment
A risk assessment needs to be performed to determine and mitigate potential risks. In case the risk is identified, it is essential to create a risk mitigation strategy to validate potential issues.
Step 7: Develop a cloud roadmap and plan
The next step is to develop a cloud strategy roadmap and outline cloud priorities, goals, timelines, resources, and budget. Moreover, while developing a cloud strategy roadmap, it is essential to plan cloud implementation, testing, development activities, cloud training, communication, and other strategies.Step 8: Execute cloud roadmap and plan
After developing a cloud strategy roadmap, it’s time for execution. Execute the cloud roadmap and plan as per the cloud architecture and governance guidelines following best practices and standards.How Does A Cloud Strategy Roadmap Work?
A cloud strategy roadmap is a well-crafted plan built to visualize the process that needs to be followed for building a cloud solution.
The roadmap is a great way for IT teams and stakeholders to stay in the loop and align on business goals when implementing any migration strategy.
The cloud strategy roadmap includes essential information about each stage in the process to keep everyone on track and informed about the objectives.
Advantages Of A Cloud Strategy
1] Safe and secure
A cloud strategy helps provide a safe and secure environment to mitigate common risks associated with cloud adoption. With an effective strategy, it is possible to mitigate potential risks like data loss, security breaches, malfunction, malicious threats, and more.
2] Roadmap for future tech investments
With a clear cloud strategy, organizations can have a proper understanding of future tech investments. It helps forecast which technologies to invest in for enhanced cloud infrastructure, security, and operations.
3] Leverage evolving technologies
Another benefit of cloud strategy is it allows companies to take advantage of evolving technologies as per the changing needs of the company. It helps businesses understand which services and resources to utilize now and save for the future.
4] Better collaboration
A well-structured cloud strategy includes all essential information related to different stages of the cloud adoption process. From business objectives to best practices, team members can access necessary information that enhances team collaboration and aligns with business objectives.
5] Cost savings
A cloud strategy guides organizations if they need to invest in internal IT staff or other resources, which helps in investing in what’s needed and saves extra costs from spending on unwanted resources.
Key Challenges Of Cloud Adoption
Like any technology, there are some limitations to cloud adoption. For example, one of the most common challenges faced when moving to the cloud is data security and compliance.
No matter how careful you are, there is a risk of data being hacked, leaked out of business, or acquired by businesses with different data security standards.
Other disadvantages of cloud adoption include:
- Managing change in culture and process around IT
- Challenges in choosing which services to move to the cloud and keep on-premise
- IT staffing and talent shortage
- Network infrastructure challenges
Well, the good news is that these challenges can be addressed through research and understanding. Many of these issues faced when migrating to the cloud are due to a lack of understanding and support.
Collaborating with top cloud consulting companies can help mitigate these challenges and allow seamless integration with cloud services.
Why Migrate To The Cloud?
At this point, it’s pretty much clear that the benefits of cloud adoption outweigh the limitations. Moving to the cloud helps businesses increase performance, improve operational efficiency, boost productivity, lower IT costs, improve collaboration, and so much more.
Cloud Strategy: Key To Successful Implementation
A clear, effective, and well thought cloud strategy is the key to successful implementation of cloud services. In today’s cloud-first world, most businesses are leveraging the benefits of cloud adoption.
Regardless of how important having a cloud strategy roadmap is, it can be challenging for businesses to do it alone. Before planning a strategy, we recommend taking advice from the best cloud consulting companies that can help with the best cloud development.
Polyxer Systems is one of the top providers of cloud computing consulting services in India. We offer the right insights and in-depth analysis, along with best practices and strategies for building a viable cloud strategy and implementation.
Being a leading cloud service company, we have extensive experience in building effective cloud strategies to help our clients achieve their desired business outcomes,
Through our cloud development, cloud advisory, and cloud consulting services, we help businesses throughout the cloud adoption process.
To get started, reach out to us today!
