With companies under continued pressure to innovate, accelerate growth and simplify operations, enterprises are shifting workloads to the cloud faster than most of us would have imagined possible before the pandemic. Gartner forecasts that worldwide end-user spending on public cloud services is forecast to grow 20.4% in 2022 to total $494.7 billion. That’s not to say the path to the cloud is always smooth or easy. Here are four factors CIOs should consider on their journey to the cloud.
- A multi-cloud strategy offers flexibility and cost arbitrage, but adds complexity
Most companies will—by choice or by default—end up running hybrid and multi-cloud estates as they accelerate the pace of digital transformation. Some enterprises end up working with different cloud providers because different business units have independently shifted workloads and applications into the cloud over the years. Other companies will pursue multi-cloud strategies to avoid vendor lock-in, ensure redundancy and gain negotiating power.
Or they will follow a deliberate multi-cloud strategy to use the most appropriate and cost-effective cloud provider and service for each infrastructural requirement, service, or application. Despite these benefits, a hybrid and multi-cloud model raises a range of administration and integration challenges, not least of which is gaining visibility into the costs and performance of the multi-cloud environment.
- The cloud is a new operating model for IT
The cloud isn’t just about technology—it represents a new operating model for IT. CIOs followed a capital-expenditure model of purchasing, depreciating, and amortising IT assets when they managed on-premises data centers. The cloud demands that they move towards a model based on real-time operational expenditure. Companies thus need to implement FinOps tools and practices that offer insight into real-time costs and performance.
With cutting-edge cloud expense management tools (CEM), companies are assured visibility across their multi-cloud estate, so they can accurately track and forecast cloud spending. FinOps and CEM bring accountability and transparency to cloud-based IT—in turn enabling CIOS to simplify operations and make smarter decisions about cloud spending.
- DevOps and cloud are better together
In DevOps, operations, and software development teams work together through the entire software lifecycle, from design to production support. This approach enhances agility and accelerates software development. DevOps has enormous synergies with cloud migration, helping to bridge the divide between operations and development so that a business can speed up time to market.
The smarter, rapid and iterative software development and delivery processes of DevOps unlock the benefits that the cloud offers in terms of flexibility and scalability. One study found that using cloud or DevOps alone accelerates software delivery by just over 50%. But using them together achieves an acceleration of 81%.
- You can’t completely outsource risk management
When it comes to cloud security and networking, cloud service providers offer solutions that are, if anything, more secure and resilient than the systems most companies could afford to run in-house. However, knowledgeable CIOs are aware that they cannot wash their hands of information security, risk, and compliance concerns once they migrate to the cloud.
IT needs to forge partnerships with cloud service providers based on a sound understanding of how they will meet address the business’s business continuity, data privacy, and sovereignty, security, and compliance requirements. CIOs also need to make sure that they have a handle on their responsibilities in terms of security policy, end-user education, and cloud configuration.
Your guide to the world of the cloud
We have been helping companies to optimise technology performance and costs since before the term FinOps was dreamt up. When combined, our cloud identity, cloud management, and technology expense management solutions can facilitate seamless digital transformation for your business. Get in touch to learn how our knowledgeable team can support your migration to the cloud.