Shrikant Navelkar, Director, Clover Infotech
The advancement in technology and the evolving global economy saw enterprises looking to improve their business efficiency, elasticity, and innovation. Recent years have seen organizations move to the cloud which has led to a radical change in their business model, operations, and cost. Cloud adoption promises accelerated innovation, increased efficiency, lower costs, and helps organizations in their digital transformation journey. However, embracing cloud hastily might lead to challenges and business disruption.
According to an IDC report, the cloud-as-a-service market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 159.7 percent (2019-2024), reaching up to $24.6 billion by 2024.
Cloud adoption is not easy. IT leaders responsible for planning and executing cloud migrations may, at times, be working in the dark – with lack of access to all the tools and information needed to make the right decisions. Here are few barriers to cloud adoption and migration that organizations face and ways to overcome them:
Lack of Alignment between Business and IT Teams: Alignment of business and IT is vital for enterprise-wide cloud adoption and process digitalization. Leaders will have a difficult time ensuring stability in the core business unless both teams have unified goals. They must work in synergy with collaborative efforts, identify business pain points, and help business users to understand the technology, its benefits and business impact.
No Vision or Strategy: Investment in new technologies and change in business processes is often considered only when deemed necessary. Tight budgets, limited resources, and existing delivery commitment might put new technology adoption on the backburner. IT leaders must build centre of excellence and innovation teams that focus on experimenting with newer technologies – by identifying the right strategy for organization’s digital transformation journey including cloud modernization.
Reluctance from Business Users: Business users are often reluctant towards change in technology or processes. They feel that the change will bring more challenges than benefits and might disrupt the flow and slow down process efficiency. Business teams are often satisfied with existing results if the transition to newer technology brings fractional improvement. IT leaders must ensure that they have open discussions with business users, understand their processes, gaps, and find resolutions together. IT leaders must align technology to business needs and not the other way around. They must marry each business objective or pain area of business processes to technologies that can solve them. If cloud modernization fits the bill and is the way to go, IT teams should conduct awareness sessions on cloud benefits and how it solves business users’ problems.
Legacy Systems: Organizations with a traditional approach towards IT, either due to their line of business or regulatory mandates, may find themselves deeply entrenched in legacy applications and infrastructure. These organizations might look at cloud adoption as a ‘no-go’, citing regulatory mandates, security risks, data leaks, or business continuity as reasons for resistance. Cloud adoption, then becomes an uphill task since it must address all of the above challenges and replace the legacy framework. With a legacy architecture in place, organizational leaders must first address business sustainability. They must ask themselves if continuing with legacy platforms will benefit in the long run – given cloud is the way to go. Does existing technology serve current business requirements? Does it serve and deliver a unified customer experience? Are new and modern cloud-ready applications compatible with legacy systems? If the answers tilt towards a shift to cloud, then leaders must design a strategy to slowly transition into the cloud with a business continuity plan in place.
Data Governance & Security: Data privacy and governance has been a primary concern for most organizations who choose cloud modernization. This stems from a myth or a widespread belief that cloud is not secure and cannot protect organizational data. They feel keeping the data closer to home, on-premises against cloud, will provide more protection and control over vulnerabilities. Cloud, on the contrary, makes running the business much simpler, easier, and secure, providing them with the latest and best-in-class security. Cloud OEMs stay updated on newer risks and have the ability to ensure robust security to prevent vulnerabilities globally. Small businesses can leverage cloud and get the same benefits and security as a billion-dollar conglomerate would. Also, the ownership of identifying future vulnerabilities, patches, and updates to security is taken care by the cloud provider, thereby enabling the organization to focus on their key business objectives.
Conclusion
Cloud is the next technology imperative. Organizations must eventually design a robust strategy to start their cloud modernization and digital transformation journey. Organizations can partner with IT service providers and cloud consultants who can help them to understand cloud benefits, address their challenges and break underlying myths. Leaders must lead their organizations towards cloud to provide best-in-class security, deliver seamless and unified customer experience, and stay ahead of their competition.
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