BY 2022, PUBLIC CLOUD SERVICES WILL BE ESSENTIAL FOR 90% OF BUSINESS INNOVATION - GARTNER

The advantages of shifting to cloud platforms have been well established over the last decade and businesses are reaping the benefits based on the value propositions of cloud offerings, despite the ongoing pandemic. Companies that have adopted cloud services have been able to accelerate their time to market, innovate faster and scale more efficiently.

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According to McKinsey, only 14% companies using legacy systems benefit from digital transformation initiatives, which can be addressed by deploying cloud technology solutions.

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A traditional IT set up is not suited for digital transformation. Hence, it has become imperative for organizations looking to fast track their digital transformation journey, to adopt new technology operating models that deploy cloud & attain speed, efficiency, agility, along with robust security.

Here are 7 aspects to get you started to formulate a comprehensive cloud strategy:

1. Cloud Based Digital Transformation Strategy: Positive Gains

A cloud-based digital transformation strategy offers great opportunities for businesses by not only enabling them to optimize their operations and reduce cost but also giving them the ability to perform tedious tasks and data intensive operations.

It helps a business to scale up or ramp down business application needs, by handling enormous amounts of data coming through multiple sources, like the data from various digital IoT sensors. A cloud-based digital transformation strategy can support the use of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to provide delightful customer experiences.

2. Cloud Adoption Strategy: Well Planned Collective Approach

With all the promise the cloud holds for a business, it is wiser to plan the migration very carefully with a comprehensive and well-planned cloud strategy that can be directed towards meeting the digital transformation needs of your enterprise as well as reaping business benefits by achieving customer satisfaction.

3. Making the Business Case for Cloud Adoption

Adopting a cloud strategy for digital transformation starts by making the business case for such deployment. It must be ensured that the right cloud infrastructure is being built that can support the digital transformation goals for the business. It would include explicit understanding of how such cloud adoption and subsequent digital transformation can reshape the business for the better, how it will help your business grow and how will the present impediments to your existing customer experience goals will be addressed.

4. Right Cloud Deployment Model

The most important aspect of a comprehensive cloud strategy is the determination of the cloud migration path. Businesses can opt for either public cloud provider, a private cloud host or a hybrid model depending on the needs and the nature of the business.

A public cloud model such as Infrastructures as a service (IaaS model) offers computing resources to businesses on a need basis and Platform as a service (PaaS model) offers different tools hosted on a cloud platform to help businesses and teams develop and test new applications. Software as a service (SaaS model) feature of a public cloud helps a business manage their business needs through software vendors on cloud and host business capabilities and related data.

5. Application Modernization and Shift to Cloud

Legacy applications and systems often account for a vast majority of business IT workload. These mission critical applications are generally built from scratch to empower your existing business needs and ensure business compliance. These applications either may not be ready for the cloud adaption or would need go through significant modernization before they are cloud ready.

Organizations thus need to ensure that their modernization roadmap identifies what needs to move, what needs to be modified and what is not worthy of moving to cloud for meeting business needs in the future.

6. Security Compliance and Data Criticality

As an organization moving to the new infrastructure or service on the cloud, you must ensure you have a clear understanding of your ability to control and have access to sensitive data and data protection. Security compliance also covers the audit mechanism for continuously meeting the legal requirements. Addressing the security compliance and data criticality is a pressing concern for every sound cloud migration strategy.

7. Time to Invest in your Cloud Strategy

Enterprises need to develop comprehensive cloud strategies for making their move towards becoming a cloud-first and cloud native organization, where the cloud is the preferred and prioritized model to drive and fast track digital transformation efforts.

Being cloud-ready with a comprehensive cloud deployment strategy can assure your investments are rightly directed towards accelerating your digital transformation goals.

Espire Infolabs offers a comprehensive suite of cloud services focusing on seamless collaboration across your business functions - creating an agile, flexible, and a customer centric environment. Espire with its strategic partnerships ensures delivery of best-in-class cloud solutions, ensuring smooth transition of your critical data delivering both scalability and reliability. Reach us at marketing@espire.com and do subscribe to our blog for latest trends, updates and insights.