Understanding the Significance of Cloud Culture
Public, private, hybrid, and hyper-scale cloud models continue to take the global economy by storm. Such is the penetration of the cloud model across all businesses that cloud service integration goes far beyond the remit of an IT department and requires board-level leadership. Welcome to the dawn of cloud culture.
The cloud has the potential to be a transformative technology that offers flexible, scalable, and cost-effective infrastructure. So the vendor and technology deployment decisions taken before migration must match each company’s unique business requirements.
Creating a successful and meaningful cloud culture upfront will make this a much easier task, but it has to start at the top of the company—ideally with a Chief Technology Officer. This is because it is a delicate balancing between reshaping policies and workflows while preserving the core philosophies and drivers that initially propelled the company to success.
Getting cloud culture right means thinking about your employees, your IT security, and your customers — particularly how each may react or change with your move into the cloud. If you encounter resistance in one of these areas once the adoption is underway, then operations could be impacted.
Developing a cloud culture also means learning and understanding the links between communications, sales, marketing, product development, and security. Cloud has the potential to link all these aspects efficiently and effectively. However, if your cloud culture is not robust, the technology can cause confusion, disarray, and siloed working—all the things that it’s supposed to prevent.
Having a strong cloud culture will also enable businesses to make a much more informed decision about which kind of cloud infrastructure to adopt. An increasing number of companies are opting for a hybrid option as they feel it offers the highest levels of flexibility, efficiency, and peace of mind. As a co-located option, hybrid cloud is the best fit for many companies and gives them the best chance of adapting to future challenges and changing IT landscapes.
When it comes to hybrid cloud, businesses need to select a provider with a comprehensive vendor and technology partner network. This will enable them to secure the very best fit for their requirements. Cloud providers with a limited vendor roster may try to box companies in to a hybrid solution that does not meet their needs. Having a clear and defined cloud culture will mitigate that risk and help them make the best decision for their business.
Total cost of ownership (TCO) was considered the driving force for cloud adoption for a long time.
