The cloud transformation landscape is continuously changing. So, it can be difficult to keep up with everything that’s happening in this field and how it might affect your business. Cloud transformation is one of the most crucial initiatives your business takes on as it can help you uncover untapped growth potential by letting you scale to meet the needs of your customers. This article outlines some important considerations that will help you know what to consider before moving forward with any Cloud Transformation strategy.

Cloud Transformation: The Game Changer

Too often, businesses confuse cloud transformation with cloud migration. While cloud migration is an integral part of cloud transformation, the latter is more concerned with the digital evolution of an organization than it is with the physical relocation of on-premises resources to a cloud environment, but both can be addressed by developing and implementing a Cloud Migration Strategy.

Cloud transformation intends to help businesses remain competitive and resilient in the face of increasing market demands by taking a holistic approach to cloud migration, optimization, analytics, and cloud security. The term "Cloud Transformation" refers to a complete change in an organization's structure, culture, and methods of operation. It improves business processes, stimulates expansion and creativity by allowing companies to focus on their customers and develop novel solutions. Your bottom line will benefit as a whole. When a business adopts cloud computing, it improves its operations, procedures, and services, which in turn speeds up its digital transformation.

Organizations are rushing to the cloud to update their environments, enhance system stability, accommodate hybrid work styles, and deal with other new realities prompted by the pandemic. By 2025, Gartner predicts that 95% or more of all businesses will have moved their operations to the cloud. That's a tremendously fast rate of expansion, and the reasons for it are obvious.

Key Drivers Behind Cloud Transformation

Almost half of all companies already use cloud investments as part of their IT strategy, and this trend shows no signs of decline. Every business faces its own unique combination of priorities and obstacles throughout the transition to the cloud. Any number of factors could influence a company's decision to go to the cloud, but before making the transition, management should have a solid understanding of how the cloud could best serve their needs and the necessary infrastructure and procedures to ensure a smooth transition. The following are some of the most common business drivers for successful cloud migration.

1. Capital Cost Reduction

Companies are aware that establishing a physical presence for data storage and processing can be a huge financial commitment. After a certain amount of time, this

hardware must be upgraded. Embracing cloud technology can help you save money on costly upfront investments. Only the resources you use are charged to you – Pay as you go model. You'll be able to put that money toward developing new products and / or optimizing the current products.

2. Improved Business Agility

Agility in business is the ability to rapidly develop and deploy new and improved products in response to changes in demand. In the cloud, the infrastructure can be scaled up or down as needed. Business owners can reduce operational costs depending on their needs and pay only for the resources they use. Cloud deployment allows for faster, more reliable updates. In addition, it facilitates time savings and permit individuals to devote more time on strategic initiatives.

3. Added Value

Cloud transformation provides businesses with a competitive advantage by enabling them to offer innovative solutions through easily accessible technology to their clientele. With less time and money spent on infrastructure upkeep, businesses can focus on offering continuous value to their customers and rewarding their investors. Companies can improve their responsiveness to customers' needs and the quality of their products by releasing changes more rapidly.

4. Improve Collaboration Among Teams

Collaboration is essential to the success of your organization whether your projects involve several teams or if your teams are spread out across different places.

Adopting a cloud-based IT infrastructure leads to simplification of IT operations. It creates opportunities for novel ways of approaching teamwork and workflow while streamlining internal operations. New technology or company initiatives can be implemented more quickly and with less hassle. Adoption of the cloud also improves the dissemination, analysis, and application of business data by offering complete visibility into its flow from inception to conclusion.

Six Considerations For The Cloud Transformation Initiative

When defining your cloud transformation journey, there are several aspects to think about. Each business's goals and value streams in the cloud transition process are distinctive. Your ability to adapt, innovate, and persevere may hinge on the clarity of your approach. Cloud allows organizations to realize their goal of holistic change, allowing them to rapidly grow, adopt cutting-edge technologies, create new ecosystems, and more. It's crucial to evaluate your current situation, establish your top priorities, and learn the capabilities of the resources available to you. It allows you to move more swiftly, with less downtime for your organization and a quicker return on your investment. Further, it aids in elucidating the nature of the external support you will require.

Cloud transformation safeguards your business from potential dangers in the market. It can help with both the big picture and day-to-day operations of running a business. Here are some considerations you should keep in mind before implementing cloud transformation in your business.

1. Determine Your Organizational Readiness

Before you even consider cloud transformation for your business, we suggest you do a bit of research and list out the pros and cons of Cloud Transformation for your company. It is essential to ensure that the cloud transformation is aligned with the organization's strategy and roadmap. Ensure it provides the required value to the business and produces the desired outcomes. Cloud transformation can have a significant impact on existing operational processes and teams, so ensure that you are aware of your organization's cloud maturity level and skill shortages before moving forward. Don’t be afraid of taking help from a digital innovation partner.

2. Analyze The Best Cloud Options

The cloud provider you choose will have access to all of your sensitive information, so it's important to think carefully before making that decision. Fortunately, there are feasible options that can be tailored to meet the requirements of businesses of varying sizes and budgets. However, each platform will have unique features, so it is important to carefully evaluate your options to find the one that is the best fit for your business's needs.

Determine your company's long-term priorities. Compare the market reputation of the cloud providers, how stable they are, interoperability aspects, how easy it is to set them up and make changes, how safe they are, and their pricing.

3. Employee Engagement Strategy

It's essential to identify that everyone's experience of cloud transformation will be distinct in terms of both pace and severity. In any industry, technological transitions can be challenging to navigate, and employees involved in cloud transformation initiatives are no exception. Change is often accompanied by fear of incompetence and isolation, making adaptation difficult. Individuals who are well-versed in their respective fields, usually have a thorough understanding of the business and know whom to ask for help if they ever hit a snag. Since their expertise isn't being put to use right now, they may feel devalued.

Organizations need a strategy to involve employees and stakeholders in adapting to change because everyone has their own comfort level with transitioning. There are three aspects of employee engagement that should be considered when formulating a new strategy.

• Recognize the impact of change on individuals
• Determine actions that identify affected individuals
• Understand when and how to discover solutions

4. Define Progress Metrics

To ensure your organization's resources are being used effectively in line with a cloud transformation strategy, it can employ metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to drive behaviors and measure success. Your Cloud transformation strategy's aim should be mirrored in the metrics you choose, which could be either qualitative or quantitative.

Aligning metric data with corporate, technical objectives, and target audiences or personas is essential for gaining actionable insights. Validating the business results of IT transformation allows your company to align with, and track progress toward the desired results.

5. Build a Sustainable Governance Plan

It is important to review data governance policies and procedures before making the move to the cloud. Data standardization, integration, protection, and storage should all be spelled out in a company's data governance policy. Try to find a way to keep things getting better over time. Cloud allows you to dynamically deploy infrastructure workloads and services. To ensure efficient and cost-effective provisioning maintenance, you can develop comprehensive policies that outline how, when, where, and what is delivered. Access rules should also be specified.

6. Reinforce Security Measurements

When transitioning to the cloud, security is generally a top priority, although it is also one of the least understood aspects of the process. Most platforms have predefined security rules and procedures that cannot be altered for individual users. While cloud security is becoming increasingly important, it is possible that your in- house team will lack expertise in this area. The combination of the two can make it difficult to assemble the appropriate teams, acquire necessary permissions, etc. The disruption of a program's timeline is quite real and can have serious consequences.

Involving security teams early in the process and having the appropriate conversations to effectively describe the needs and security solutions can help reduce some of the risks associated with aspect of solution design – think DevSecOps.

Cloud Transformation: Way To The Future

One of the most crucial endeavor your business will undertake is Cloud Transformation. Cloud services can open up new doors for growth and help you scale more effectively to meet customer expectations. The flexibility, scalability, and pay-per-use billing that cloud services provide are advantageous to numerous organizations (large, mid and small alike). However, just as with any infrastructure service, you should initiate a risk-based evaluation to determine whether cloud adoption is appropriate for your particular use case. Give yourself enough time to perform the required analysis and planning before deciding how the cloud will impact your business. Qentelli has the potential to accelerate cloud adoption, mitigate disruptions, optimize costs, and streamline cloud data management. If you're thinking about transitioning to the cloud, Qentelli can help you reach that goal, just send us an email at [email protected]