People, processes and technology: the perfect combination

Organisations that begin a journey towards adopting cloud must begin with a clear understanding of the destination, or be left with disappointing results.

From being a buzzword, cloud computing has transitioned to become a critical and strategic component for businesses across all sectors in today’s digitally connected world. The challenge now for IT decision-makers is to sort through the proliferation of information to find that which is most relevant, which in turn will help them make the right choices. They need to focus on a holistic view of all aspects within the organisation, going beyond just IT and including people, process and technology. By doing this, decision-makers can effectively define and build a complete cloud implementation (whether private, public or hybrid) that can lead to a total business transformation marked by expedited product delivery and reduced IT costs.

Making the right move

Just as in the wider IT world in general, cloud implementations are increasingly moving towards a more hybrid infrastructure. Furthermore, spanning heterogeneous infrastructures, supporting multivendor environments and bridging existing business workflows to this hybrid cloud world requires open approaches such as open source - just as leading public clouds have done. But within this broad open and hybrid framework, there’s also a need to take into account the specific needs of each individual business.

Using a cloud methodology that addresses unique business needs, aligns with regulatory constraints and optimises for individual performance, cost and risk requirements will allow for improved speed-to-market, near-limitless scalability, cost savings, increased accessibility and reduced operating risks.

With the flexibility, efficiency and scalability offered by cloud technologies also comes the challenge of building out an implementation that maximises the business’s potential. Organisations must carefully examine their businesses to determine where and what type of cloud will be the most appropriate given their existing IT deployments, and based on workload-specific requirements around cost, risk and performance.

Finding the right balance

Transforming the current enterprise IT model to a hybrid cloud model is not as simple as just completing a technology transformation. Treating it as such will make the transformation that much harder and the benefits even harder to realise. To uncover the right approach and reap the intended benefits - no matter what the size or goals of the organisation - it becomes critical to ensure businesses find the right balance of people, process and technology.

People. Given the rapidly changing technology landscape and the necessity to use that technology to drive business value, most businesses face a quandary when it comes to internal business and IT staff. One such issue is that many valued but veteran employees don’t always have the knowledge of new business process methodologies, or of newer architecture, design and implementation skills as they relate to the cloud.

The problem can be addressed through a compelling solution by engaging with customers with deliverables-based engagements. These engagements allow projects within newer business models and technologies to be implemented, while simultaneously using a proven, hands-on mentoring process to foster the development of internal staff. This will enable customers’ staff to be operationally ready to work with the new cloud infrastructures built.

Process. At the core of most enterprise IT organisations is a rigid, process-laden approach to platform delivery, which can exacerbate any enterprise architecture difficulties. With the introduction of cloud, which can greatly simplify an infrastructure, organisations must lay the foundation for proper governance and processes, or else the web of infrastructure will become even more complex and unmanageable.

To meet customer demands, a more agile, collaborative and iterative process for systems management is necessary. However, many organisations employ a classic waterfall model to systems procurement, a methodology that has consistently been shown to be extremely inflexible to meet changing business needs and which can often lead to delays in product delivery. While stringent processes may be required, especially in regard to security, using a cloud model to automate platform delivery can greatly enhance an organisation’s capabilities to deliver both faster and more consistently. By focusing on optimising process early in a cloud implementation, an organisation can ensure that its cloud maximises the organisation’s potential.

Technology. There are many technology options when it comes to a cloud implementation. The right solution will be dependent on the organisation’s goals and challenges. Ideally, organisations must use secure, open source products to build their cloud solution. Additionally, specific technologies allow those organisations to manage a variety of hybrid cloud infrastructures. This in turn enables them to quickly mobilise and scale up across multiple cloud deployments as their business needs increase.

Shaping your cloud strategy

Moving to the cloud involves embracing new technologies, new service and deployment models, and substantially new IT skill sets and processes.

Organisations that begin a journey towards adopting cloud, without a clear understanding of the destination, are typically left with disappointing results.

Therefore, one needs to take into consideration various factors while defining a clear cloud strategy. This includes the expected impact of cloud on the business, identifying applications that could be moved to cloud, how to maintain security and policy compliance in the cloud, and choosing the best-suited cloud deployment model.

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