There is probably no hotter topic in business technology right now than cloud computing. Like many other rapidly popularised technologies, the cloud has inspired its fair share of advocates and detractors, with opinions often drawn from both fact and fiction alike.
As a result, today’s CIOs – who must view cloud usage strategically, not theoretically or anecdotally – often find themselves fighting a multi-front battle, says Mark Ridley, regional director for Africa, NetApp.
Today’s CIOs not only must mitigate fears and manage expectations internally, but also must do so while simultaneously defining terms and contingencies with cloud service providers. To complicate matters further, while these critical conversations and negotiations are unfolding, CIOs often have to make tough decisions to restructure their own teams to best meet new – and quickly shifting – operational realities.
To top it all off, applications must be architected to take full advantage of the productivity improvements and operational realities the cloud can provide.
No one could fault a CIO for wondering if adopting a cloud strategy is worth the trouble, especially when that CIO already has a roadmap packed with new technology deployments. In fact, asking that simple question is a great place to start.
Understanding that a move to cloud technology can be quite complicated allows a CIO to move forward thoughtfully and strategically, priming the organisation to most effectively and efficiently capitalise on the benefits a strong cloud strategy offers, without compromising other future plans for the information technology architecture.
And make no mistake: if done right, those benefits can be myriad, but an effective cloud strategy must always align with an IT organisation’s overall enterprise architecture plans.
Employing a hybrid approach that employs private software as a service (SaaS: the ability to consume pre-packaged applications), infrastructure as a service (IaaS: the ability to host applications), and platform as a service (PaaS: the ability to build applications) to host everything from outward-facing applications such as social media and file sharing to more proprietary ones such as CRM and development environments used by engineering teams can offer substantial advantages.
How substantial? With the adoption of cloud technology, organisations can see multi-thousand percent increases in time to delivery for new applications, dramatically better utilisation of storage capacity, and millions of dollars in annual savings on hardware and software support costs and a technology infrastructure that is easier to scale to accommodate shifting workloads.
However, these results can happen only when agility is included as a design principle for IT systems. Only by embracing agility will CIOs be able to deliver on the promise inherent in cloud computing.
Such a change doesn’t happen overnight. The road to a successful cloud deployment can be a long one, with many twists and turns. Some CIOs make the mistake of thinking their organisations are more ready for the transition than they actually are: an assumption that can cause some serious growing pains and misunderstandings.