By reading this statement one may feel what is so great about it that I am trying to tell or share here
? There is much deeper meaning to it. In my role of providing the consulting to the various
businesses, have come across some jarring truths that while businesses have decided and moving
ahead in selection-adoption of Cloud environment, there is no clear strategy around what are the
goals (short and long term), what will be the investment, ROI and measurement of the same, how
would cloud help them to be more competitive, what will the timeline and risks mitigation etc. etc.
most of these are either not addressed or were vague. Businesses do have business strategy –
documented well so why not the cloud Strategy?
That is where the problem begins and results don’t come through …
Let us start by understanding: What is a Cloud Strategy ?
As simply put, Cloud strategy is your action plan of achieving long term success in Cloud.
Gartner defines it as “a concise point of view on the role of cloud within the organization.” Let us
look at what could be the main benefits Cloud could bring to the table:
- Reduce IT Costs
- Scalability
- Business Continuity
- Flexibility
- Increased Collaboration
- Disaster Recovery
- Speed
- Quality Control
I am sure these benefits any business / org would want to gain and also make progress. In the
absence of strategy, it is not possible to gain the above benefits continuously and also measure pre
and post results. Let us look at quickly the linkage business issues -> potential of cloud to solve it ->
linkage to cloud strategy-> Possible KPIs to be tarcked linkage to understand it better:
| Sr. No. |
Business Issues | Probable Solution in Cloud |
Cloud Strategy linkage |
Possible KPI/ Measurement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Spending too much on Data Centre (DC) and Licenses |
Select the right Cloud Provider and the right model (may be Hybrid Cloud ) |
We will replace on premise Data Centre by Hybrid Cloud in 3 years – detail plan and actionable |
Current DC Cost Vs Cloud Cost ( Capex+Opex) – Reduction by say 20% to 40% |
| 2. | Not sure about the volatility in the business due to fluctuating demands and hence cannot plan on huge investments |
Select right Cloud Provider model with pay per use model for the Infra and licenses |
Which set of Applications e.g. Front Store/Ecommerce /Market place to be moved to cloud as a Strategy – detail plan and actionable |
Current Cost of scalability and hosting Vs cloud based model of hosting and scalability |
| 3. | Want to help the Distributors of the business to quickly get the real time reports on the stock, availability of the material. There are many new Distributors |
Quickly deploy the functionality and enable new and existing distributors to access it in a secured way. This can be done on the cloud very fast and also with proper security. |
New Functionality development across the business demands – where it will happen, how it will happen, who will do it and the timelines – Cloud Strategy |
Time to Deploy? Enablement of the Distributors – how quickly? |
Some Key questions which one need to address to get to the Cloud strategy formation are:
- What are the key goals to bring in the Cloud ? E.g. Cost Savings, Efficiency, Scalability etc.
- Who will decide in which cloud to invest into and the commercials? E.g. One has to look at
ROI etc. by comparing on various options. - What KPIs, management need to track and at what intervals ?
- How cloud is going to help the business to be more competitive ?
- What risks are involve and the mitigation measures ?
- What are the timelines of implementation and who prepares the implementation plan ?
- What are IT process changes, DR & Business Continuity changes ?
- What happens to business change management ?
- Who creates the cloud strategy ? Should be the IT leader who with a small team together
creates the blueprint
In addition to the above key questions to be addressed there needs to following activities to be
planned which will help cloud strategy Execution to be successful:
- Executive Sponsorship – The mandate of moving to cloud and the messaging to all need to
come from the Executive Sponsor which could be COO, CEO, CXO roles explaining the
rationale behind and what to expect and contribution from all. - Core Team Formation – There needs to be cross functional team created – comprising of
business leadership, IT Leadership, Functional Leadership etc. where there is representation
of teams implementing it and the teams which are going through this change, additionally
the Cloud SMEs need to be part of the team (if not available internally need to be hired or
through consulting role get them available) - Change Management – There needs to a formal intervention of change management,
meaning there has to be plan to conduct change management workshops defining the
changes in the process, functionality of the impacted functions and walk them through the
proposed changes if any. For the functions where there is no change, the communication
still needs to go. - Governance and communication – There needs to be a governance meetings to be set with
regular cadence – defining what will be tracked and reported, at what frequency, who will
attend, what is the escalation path and who will communicate to the entire business the
updates. - Budgetary Planning – The Core team needs to plan with the FIN – Leadership team, the
investments needed in the form of CPAEX and OPEX across the plan duration and also the
savings which will be achieved by usage of clouds.
Overall with a clear Cloud Strategy Blue Print and the planning activities above if taken care well
then one can say that Organisation is moving with right Cloud strategy and can lead to Better
Business Value, Flexibility & Revenue Growth.