By Expedient
Cloud adoption in 2024 is a common IT strategy for many organizations.
What are the most common types of cloud adoption?
• Migrations to Software as a Service (SaaS) versions of business applications are so common that many software providers are forcing clients to adopt them.
• Organizations are moving away from on-premises data centers and moving infrastructure to the cloud to reduce the need for IT staff focused on hardware, licensing, power, cooling and real estate expertise.
To truly capitalize on what the cloud has to offer, organizations need unmistakable signs of a successful cloud migration. Here are 5 key indicators that your move to the cloud is paying off.
1. High-Quality End-User Experience
The applications that IT delivers to the organization are the primary criteria that employees use to judge IT effectiveness. If the cloud migration slows down the startup time or daily usage of the core business applications, users are likely to be unhappy and the migration will be judged accordingly. Poor cloud choices can make applications slower, more inconsistent, and frustrating. Choosing the right cloud(s) can spell success or failure of a cloud migration.
2. Efficiency Gains on IT Infrastructure Support
Moving away from on-premises data centers, or “getting out of the data center business,” can often translate to reducing the complexity and staff requirements for delivering IT services to the organization. Reducing the hours needed for IT infrastructure support frees up IT staff to provide faster and better services organization’s operations teams.
3. Impacts on IT Skillsets
The skills that the IT staff needs to support an effective cloud migration varies dramatically based on cloud choices. Successful cloud migrations don’t necessarily require a whole new IT staff to be effective. The opportunity to learn new IT skills can be an effective retention strategy for the IT team. However, too much change can cause the organization’s best IT talent to leave and cause cloud migrations to fail.
4. Better Recoverability
Cloud migrations are most beneficial when they deliver big improvements that the organization’s employees can feel. Good cloud migrations deliver easier, more automated ways to automatically failover from common problems like telecommunications outages, accidental file deletions and simple hardware failures. Great cloud migrations also provide for fast recovery from big problems like ransomware attacks and failed software updates. Cloud migrations should improve the reliability of the key IT systems by making them more reliable and easier to recover in the event of an emergency.
5. Predictable Cost Model
Many organizations now prefer operating expenses to the more common capital expense that IT historically required to provide services. The best cloud migrations can make IT costs much more predictable by delivering fixed, predictable costs for the resources used and by minimizing unpredictability. Cloud cost models can make it easy for the organization to assign increases in cloud spend to specific business initiatives.
One Step at a Time
Highly effective cloud migrations are often a series of small, incremental steps toward long-term goals that can shift based on staffing, operational needs, industry and market conditions. Early cloud adopters often adopted single cloud platforms and all-SaaS strategies, mistaking simplicity for effectiveness. The best cloud migrations focus on organizational, end-user and application requirements. Single cloud solutions and all-at-once changes can increase the risk of failure. Take one step to the cloud at a time and plan those steps well to avoid these risks.