As conversations about the Cloud continues to focus on IT’s inability at adoption (or the gap between IT and Business), organizations outside of IT continue their cloud adoption. While many of these efforts are considered Rogue or Shadow IT efforts and are frowned upon by the IT organization, they are simply a response to a wider problem.
The IT organization needs to adopt a cloud strategy, a holistic one is even better. However, are they really ready for this approach? There are still CIOs who are resisting cloud.
A large part of the problem is that most organizations are still in a much earlier state of adoption.
Common hurdles are
- The mindset : “critical systems may not reside outside your own data center”
- Differentiation: “our applications and services are true differentiators”
- Organizational changes : “moving to cloud changes how our processes and governance models behave”
- Vendor management : “we like the current vendors and their sales representative”
In order to develop a holistic cloud strategy, it is important to follow a well-defined process. Plan Do Check Act fits just about any organization:
Assess: Provide a holistic assessment of the entire IT organization, applications and services that are business focused, not technology focused. Understand what is differentiating and what is not.
Roadmap: Use the options and recommendations from the assessment to provide a roadmap. The roadmap outlines priority and valuations .
Execute: For many, it is important to start small because of the lower risk and ramp up were possible.
Re-Assess & Adjust: As the IT organization starts down the path of execution, lessons are learned and adjustments needed. Those adjustments will span technology, organization, process and governance. Continual improvement is a key hallmark to staying in tune with the changing demands.
Today, cloud is leveraged in many ways from Software as a Service (SaaS) to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). However, it is most often a very fractured and disjointed approach to leveraging cloud. Yet, the very applications and services in play require that organizations consider a holistic approach in order to work most effectively.