If 2020 was the year of disruption, then 2022 is the year where we come out of it swinging.
And what better way to adapt to disruption than to reinvent business processes and make them more compatible with our current situation?
Reinvention has been done before but it isn’t always enough. Revamping a business isn’t easy and you often need to make lots of adjustments to make sure the change is carried out smoothly without causing even more chaos than, to begin with.
Technology has often been a boon that businesses use to reorient themselves, and in this vein, cloud technology has made reinvention and adapting to change possible in 2020. Cloud and integration software has made e-commerce and online sales a godsend at a time when in-person shopping and regular sales could not be done.
But the cloud doesn’t just make this possible, it is also an agent of change and progress─ and a massive conveyance of digital transformation. Businesses that adopt the cloud require less time to market new products and services, have lower operational costs, and see a big boost in staff productivity.
However, adapting to the cloud isn’t as simple as that. To get the most out of this technology, your organization needs a couple of changes in attitude and actions.
Shifting from a risk-averse culture to a more fearless culture when adapting to the cloud
In a traditional tech environment, it usually takes 6-9 months after obtaining the equipment needed before an initiative moves from planning to action. In comparison, on the cloud, organizations can release new features every couple of days.
This acceleration results in business value. It stimulates IT to begin thinking and acting for profit, instead of worrying about costs. They begin to analyze ways to leverage cloud technology to give the business a competitive edge.
Business and IT leaders tackle this issue by highlighting the importance of working together. They draw up operations, assessments, training sessions, and teams that allow business and IT to work in tandem and bring out the best in each other. Creating a cloud-enabled culture of adaptation is all about learning how to identify potential value and make the most of any opportunities that arise. After that, businesses can strategically use the cloud to capture as much value as they can. And to do all this, the cloud requires new and innovative ways of thinking and working.
Focusing on phased migration instead of a total overhaul
Migrating large and heavy legacy applications is difficult. And trying to transfer everything to the cloud in one go is a recipe for disaster. Instead, focus on migrating in increments and sections.
The most thorough migration strategy is re-architecting, (also called refactoring), which is complicated as it requires rebuilding your entire application environment. But this strategy happens to be the most effective as it allows you to customize features to fit your application needs while improving overall agility. If you can’t re-architect all your applications in one go, you should go for an easier strategy to start with. This will give you time to gain better resources and new skills so you can properly re-architect later.
Instead, you can go for the strategy of rehosting, deploying your applications through a managed service provider or even a local hosting service. You can therefore migrate your application quickly while reducing the impact on your application’s functionality. The host handles your infrastructure and maintenance needs so you won’t have to deal with the more complicated aspects of migration.
Re-platforming is also another solid strategy and it lets you keep your core architecture while reducing management and operational costs. Although you need to slightly alter your infrastructure, the key benefit is that you can transfer your database to a managed service to cut back on licensing costs.
Switching from minimizing costs to maximizing value
Successfully adapting to the Cloud needs analyzing ROI as much as any major measure of cloud progress, which includes the overall cost of ownership. Instead of zeroing in on reducing costs, experienced cloud strategists concentrate on organically handling cloud finances and increasing the value of the cloud.
Managing cloud finances makes sure that business leaders don’t lose track of their assets across the cloud journey. According to a 451 Research study, 64% of survey takers found that they improved their margin profits through the use of cloud financial management (CFM).
It can be quite complicated to measure how well you’re handling cloud finances or maximizing cloud value. You may be required to calculate hard-to-quantify parameters like business agility which can be quite a complex task with no one fixed method. The first step to start measuring cloud value is to allot cloud costs back to certain business initiatives, and then carefully gauge their progress. Next, keep track of the length of time initiatives take to release, the users they attract, and the revenue is driven from them.
Move from larger projects to smaller wins on if adapting to the cloud
Last year, if an organization linked cloud deployments to a business case, they were considered ahead of the competition. According to industry research, only 47.2% of organizations using the cloud in 2020 had ever done so. This year, however, an additional whopping 40.6% of businesses intend on implementing this method as well.
Businesses are gradually growing serious about utilizing cloud strategy because a cloud business case is one of the best practices that have been proven to help organizations improve their overall business position in the incoming years.
Organizations also need to ease into cloud use, changing the way they view operations and practices, using each migration to improve their cloud playbook, are great for maximizing the value from cloud adoption and banishing inertia.
Lethargy is a common but insidious barrier to cloud progress and the best practices deal with it head-on, bit by bit. Attempting to migrate and modernize everything together can create too many challenges that cannot be handled
Closing Thoughts
Innovation isn’t one big breakthrough that shatters walls dramatically. Instead, it is most often the collective impact of multiple minor changes as the business reinvents how it delivers value to consumers.
Switching to the cloud is one of the best ways for the business to reinvent its operation and delivery model. And doing things like switching from a risk-averse mindset to a more adventurous model, maximizing value, and focusing on smaller ways is the best thing you can do to make adapting to the cloud pain-free and easy for everyone involved.