CLOUD ADOPTION – 4 EASY STEPS TO BUILDING A SCALABLE BUSINESS MODEL

From a business perspective, being on the cloud is no longer an option. Cloud adoption is now a must for organizations to maintain their competitive advantage. Companies that want to stand a chance at keeping their customers and gaining new ones should acknowledge that digital transformation can only happen if they innovate. Developing agile and flexible business systems like process automation, CRM, mobile technologies, and storage systems enable them to adapt to the changing needs of today’s modern consumer. The following steps will get you closer to cloud adoption.

Assessment & roadmap

The first step in transitioning to the cloud is to perform a thorough assessment of your cloud development opportunities, challenges, and success rate. To succeed, the key is to understand is cloud adoption has any business value. Analyze success factors and IT practicability before deploying any type of application to the cloud. Following this step, make sure to document and assess the concerns and risks involved. Having a roadmap in mind is highly recommended, as it will help qualify priorities and identify resources necessary to manage the apps once the transition has been completed.

Planning & developing a custom cloud strategy

The second step focuses on planning and strategy. Regardless of the nature, size, or shape of your business, make sure to use current collateral with SaaS (software-as-a-service) and IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service). Spend some time reviewing reference architecture and relevant deployment models to make sure your cloud architecture and project roadmap are customized to the needs of your targeted audience. Initiatives you can consider at this stage in the process:

  • Identify apps that are fundamental to your business and quick to market in terms of consumer satisfaction and revenue
  • If you’re new to cloud technology, stick to simple, standalone applications that can be easily migrated. Stay focused on the learning aspect of the cloud adoption process
  • If you’re familiar with the cloud, your focus should be on improving business and customer value with efficiency, IT innovation, agility, and productivity
  • Learn more about the pros and cons of private, public, and hybrid cloud environments, as well as the core models – PaaS, SaaS, and IaaS
  • Keep your development and IT architecture teams engaged so that they can build scalable use cases for deployment
  • Choose your payment plan wisely and do thorough market research for cloud providers before making a final choice

Refactoring & adoption

Planning for cloud transitioning matters just as much as adoption. When assessing the collateral throughout the planning phase, make sure you understand available adoption and cloud computing standards. Use the deployment architecture built in the planning stage, and focus on developing app migration strategies, scripts, and use cases. To make up the migration roadmap, select your software, data stores, and servers.

During the migration, be prepared for refactoring if you’re using services and apps that are no longer supported. This way, it will become easier for your business to scale and handle microservices, thus making your entire business model more agile.

Cloud Adoption Optimization of software and business processes

Last but not least, pay close attention to software licenses and business processes. Focus on the optimization aspect to acknowledge the benefits of improved efficiency and how the cloud adds value to your business model and also to customers. To improve, it’s highly recommended that you organize periodic lessons learned sprints with your team following each cloud deployment. This will help refine methods and adjust processes accordingly.

In conclusion, for any type of business to adopt the cloud successfully, the key is to assess what business value the cloud brings. Over the years, cloud development has become easier for organizations looking to transform their IT infrastructure and become more agile. However, out of the myriad of cloud providers, platforms, and libraries out there, it can be overwhelming to make a sensible choice. To do it right, make sure to have a plan and strategy in place, as well as a competent team with a solid background in cloud development.

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