One business prefers to go all in on cloud adoption, choosing a persistent and driving digital transformation, while another approaches innovation cautiously, with more of a dipping-one-toe-in attitude. Both are part of the expanding growth of cloud computing.
The disparity in approaches to cloud adoption is widespread, but there are typically three main types of organizations regarding cloud solutions: organizations slower to join the cloud momentum, those proceeding at a steady pace, and those who are eager to access new innovation.
This is a reality about the growth of cloud adoption that isn’t represented in industry surveys. For instance, in O’Reilly’s cloud adoption survey, 88% of participants report that they are utilizing cloud solutions. What numbers like this gloss over is that most companies are still getting familiar with cloud technology and are just beginning to adopt these solutions.
While it may seem like these numbers overinflate the influence of cloud technology, what it really is indicating is that there is a lot of opportunity for cloud-driven disruption in the marketplace. Knowing where your enterprise falls in the continuum of cloud adoption attitudes can help you determine the best path toward transformation.
Each of the three categories has some common concerns, and there are next steps that make sense for each of them.
Slow-Paced Adoption: These companies have retained a similar IT architecture over the past decade, and they still own most of their hardware and software. They run their solutions on premises in data centers and have only accessed public cloud technology for non-essential applications.
There are varying reasons for their slow adoption, including concerns about regulations or security or a lack of in-house IT talent to oversee cloud adoption.
Next Steps: A company with this approach may benefit from determining which workloads and applications could be shifted to the cloud. Any organization using 500 or more virtual machines should look into deploying a private cloud housed in the on-premise infrastructure in order to reduce costs. These steps can help the business become more comfortable with cloud technology and begin moving towards transformation.
Steady Progress: This group of businesses tends to move workloads to the cloud as it makes sense, but they still retain a significant set of on-premise systems with complex management and overhead.
What holds these organizations back from full cloud adoption is the variable nature of cloud pricing that can result in higher-than-expected monthly invoices.
Next Steps: One approach that can be helpful is the containerization of applications in order to reduce their infrastructure in the public cloud and lower costs. Another consideration that might be beneficial is hybrid cloud, a combination of private and public cloud solutions. This allows the business to gain the advantages of the flexibility and fast-paced innovation in the public cloud with the customization options available with private cloud.
Innovation Seekers: These businesses have shifted every possible workload into the cloud, and they are well-versed in hybrid cloud management and containerization. Few businesses have reached this level of cloud adoption.
Next Steps: The business with a driven digital transformation strategy can continue to leverage cloud solutions for the application level and eliminate manual processes involved in deploying and integrating those applications.The growth of cloud computing is on the rise, but it’s happening at widely varying paces across different businesses and industries. No matter where your organization is on this spectrum, you need an experienced guide with a holistic approach to helping you leverage the best technology for growth. Contact us at Safari Solutions to get started.
