Johannesburg, 17 Oct 2018
According to Cisco, only about 11% of companies have an optimised cloud strategy. This may seem hard to believe when you consider that global spending on cloud IT infrastructure is projected to grow at a CAGR of 15.1%, increasing to an impressive $53.1 billion, by 2019, according to analyst firm IDC.
This increase in budgets means cloud will account for 46% of all spending on enterprise IT infrastructure.
As customers experience a paradigm shift in how they do technology, cloud is this shiny, new thing, explains NBConsult's Group CEO, Nicolas. "When a company starts going to the cloud, they look at how they can solve problems by going to the cloud," he adds. This means that they'll pick a single application, migrate it and then use that to learn. And then these learnings are fed back to a cloud advisory board.
For Nicolas, when a business has a cloud advisory board in place, it's easier to decide what applications and workloads would benefit most from a migration to the cloud and what deployment model best suits your unique needs. Not only do these cloud advisors speed up the process of making the move, their expertise also means you'll need fewer resources to guarantee cloud migration success.
But, he stresses, these board members are not only technologists, they use input from various parties across the business. It could even include external vendors who act as the "voice of sanity" between the customer and the vendor who is trying to sell them cloud, he continues.
Nicolas cites the following as key reasons why a cloud advisory board makes your journey to the cloud hassle-free:
* Define your cloud direction: Cloud consumption differs from industry to industry. For example, cloud use in the banking space is on the up as incumbents respond to disruptions to their legacy processes. And in the retail industry cloud penetration is being driven by the connected retail revolution. Each business must define its direction with its industry's specific trends in mind.
Defining your cloud direction entails understanding your requirements and then aligning those requirements to your cloud vendor for a best fit.
* Develop an implementation roadmap: Once you've established what your competitors are doing and what's happening around you, it's time to create your own roadmap. The cloud can be a catalyst for change. As such, your outline should be geared towards increasing business agility and upping IT efficiency, while also lowering operating expenses and optimising spend.
* Align business goals with tech to maximise value - It's essential to align your cloud strategy with your business goals and to choose a cloud model with your broader objectives in mind. As part of your move to cloud, your HR and people management teams must prepare teams for cloud adoption so the entire business can tap into all of the opportunities the cloud brings.
* Reduce risk: The number of businesses moving their data and applications to the cloud is on the increase, but cloud failures are also on the up. InfoWorld explains a third of cloud projects fail, especially if you don't have the right plan in place. Failure happens, but in putting together cloud advisory board it's easier to identify, and mitigate, some of the common problems that hamper cloud initiatives, like governance, security and compliance.
"Cloud advisory boards essentially distill learnings through an iterative process. So they're testing things out until they have enough knowledge to decide if it makes sense to move to cloud or not."
If you need any additional guidance about how to set up your cloud advisory board or want help making your transition to the world of cloud, NBConsult is here to help. Simply contact the company on (021) 914 2348 or e-mail sales@nbconsult.co.za.
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