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How to Nail Your Enterprise Cloud Strategy in 2022: Six Best Practices

by paige griffin•

70% of organizations will have a formal cloud strategy by 2022, and the ones that fail to adopt it will struggle. - Gartner Research

An enterprise cloud strategy follows a rational approach to cloud usage, i.e., carefully weighing the pros and cons to maximize the business benefits. An organization without a cloud strategy makes irrational decisions that lead to higher costs and fails to achieve the desired outcomes.

But how to build an enterprise cloud strategy that meets your business needs with the evolving business landscape? Read on to find out. But first, let’s discuss:

Why Do You Need an Enterprise Cloud Strategy?

“Organizations without a high-level cloud strategy will significantly increase their risk of failure and wasted investment.” - David Cearley, Vice President, and Gartner Fellow

Benjamin Franklin’s famous saying is that if you fail to plan, you’re planning to fail. The lack of enterprise cloud strategy leads to reckless business decisions, siloed technological solutions, and waste of resources. That’s why you must have an enterprise cloud strategy in place.

Here’s how an enterprise cloud strategy would help:

  • Define clear business outcomes and a roadmap to achieve them.
  • Identify the key benefits of cloud technology to make a suitable investment.
  • Decide which services will be built internally and which will be offered by the cloud partner.

Best Enterprise Cloud Strategy Practices for 2022 & Beyond

1. Set Realistic Goals

Many businesses fail to achieve desired outcomes in the cloud because they get swayed by promises of significant ROI and jump right in without articulating a long-term cloud strategy. If you don’t want to become that, never undermine the importance of planning and design. Be realistic with your goals and establish a shared understanding of the available budget and resources. It will ensure you don’t go off track and can successfully implement cloud technology in your organization.

2. Learn from Others’ Mistakes

You don’t always have to make your own mistakes to learn. Sometimes you can also learn from the mistakes of others. Closely observe organizations that tried to adopt the cloud before you. Analyze what mistakes they made, what challenges they faced, and what worked for them and what didn’t. It will ensure you don’t repeat the mistakes everyone else is making, and there’s no need for future re-implementation or costly migrations.

3. Carefully Decide on the Migration Strategy

Choosing the right cloud migration strategy is essential because the success of entire cloud adoption depends on it. Hence, take time to decide on your cloud migration strategy and choose only the one that best aligns with your vision.

You can choose from these cloud migration strategies:

  • Rehost: Migrating applications to the cloud without any changes or modifications.
  • Rearchitecture/Refactor: Completely rearchitecting the application to better suit the cloud environment.
  • Rebuild: Completely rebuild the application from scratch and replace it with the existing application.

4. Never Compromise on Security

Just because cloud services employ robust security measures doesn’t mean your application and data on it are also secure. Securing the applications or databases that you would put on the cloud platforms will still be your responsibility. Be vigilant and take the following necessary measures:

  • Never leave default credentials unchanged. Update them from time to time.
  • Don’t grant more permissions than required. People may misuse them.
  • Use advanced tools and encryption mechanisms to add a layer of security.
  • Audit your cloud environment from time to time to detect and fix loopholes as soon as possible.

5. Regularly Monitor the Performance

Monitoring the performance will help ensure that the applications you migrated to the cloud live up to the standard. Also, you attain a deeper understanding of your new state and see how you can improve it to achieve your goals.

But performance monitoring is only half the job unless you track it on the correct parameters. Small wins like reducing costs might entice you, but has it improved the performance? The only way to know is to set up and then regularly evaluate KPIs, whether they are technical or business-oriented indicators.

You must set these KPIs before the Cloud adoption. It will help you know if the transformation has made things better or degraded the overall experience. 

6. Constantly Evaluate the Evolving Technology

Most organizations fail to adopt the cloud because they treat it as a one-time event. On the other hand, Cloud Computing is a constantly evolving field. You finish on one thing and realize another version has arrived. Hence, cloud adoption should be a continuous process. 

The only way to make this happen is to make cloud education and learning accessible across the organization. Even if your company doesn’t spend much money on education, there are cost-effective ways to teach and learn. There are YouTube channels and free education courses. You can even create a knowledge base. 

Also, look for ways to apply what you’ve learned to your organization because learning is of no use if you can’t apply it.

A Few More Tips to Build a Winning Enterprise Cloud Strategy

  • Ensure that your cloud strategy closely aligns with your business strategy. Whether you provide consumer services or business services, your cloud services should support it.
  • Access cloud-related risks against the potential benefits before you commit to the cloud.
  • Don’t set cost as the sole driver for cloud adoption. Consider benefits like speed and innovation as well.
  • Clearly understand what you can expect from their provider and what skills and experience they need to use the cloud service responsibly.
  • The role of your IT team will also change with the adoption of the Cloud. Make sure your IT staff is aware of their evolving responsibilities. 

Takeaway

Cloud computing is a long journey, not a single milestone. Hence, keeping your long-term goals in mind while building an enterprise cloud strategy is essential. Hopefully, the best practices we shared above gave you enough overview. Still, if there is anything else you want to know, feel free to share in the comments below.
 

Paige Griffin is a seasoned Content Writer having 7 years of expertise in blogging, writing creative and technical copy for direct response markets and promotional advertising for B2B and B2C industries. Born and brought up in New York, Paige holds a bachelor's degree in English Literature. She has worked for industries like IT, Product engineering, Lifestyle, among others and written some great insights on technologies like python web development, PHP web development, iOS App development and so on. Besides her technical background, she is a poet by heart, who loves to connect with people through a dose of creativity and imagination.

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