The ITWeb Cloud Summit is in its second year in the current format, and brings you more than ever before in experts, content, case studies, and relevant local insight.

ITWeb has the ear of the experts in cloud in South Africa and as result the 2018 event will continue to deliver on its mandate: to dissect the A - Z of cloud for a more agile, cost-efficient and secure business environment.

We spoke to Darren Bak, lead business analyst, Synthesis, about his take on the economics of cloud and how to build a strong business case.

ITWeb events: What is your view on cloud economics?

Bak: Cloud economics has been a key focus at Synthesis, and takes into account not only the cost savings for cloud adoption through reduction in server, storage, network and facility costs, but the value of how cloud can change the way you do business. Business agility, operational resilience, cost avoidance, workforce productivity and operational costs are all taken into account.

ITWeb Events: Your presentation is focused on building a strong business case for cloud – what are the main themes that you will cover?

Bak: I will cover the following six themes: What are the reasons for going to cloud? Why is establishing a business case important? What is cloud economics? Cost optimisation and cost savings for migrating off vendor licensed products. And more about how can you leverage off AWS migration acceleration programs to limit your migration bubble.

ITWeb Events: What, in your experience, are the biggest challenges associated with a move to the cloud?

Bak: The biggest challenges, in my experience, are buy-in across the organisation and the laggard culture-scape; building secure and flexible landing zones for highly regulated industries like the banking sector and how to store and process data in the cloud safely and securely. Some of the other key focus areas are around risk mitigation, ensuring effective alignment and integration into existing infrastructure and to preparation for the management shifting paradigms as cloud implementations take place.

ITWeb Events: What, in your experience, are the major benefits associated with moving to the cloud?

Bak: While initial cloud adopters cite cost reduction as the key reason for moving to cloud, the most benefit is derived from transformational change like: accelerated innovation; increased productivity and reduction in organisational risk and improved resilience. Further benefits include better resource management, the creation of a business differentiator, improved economies of scale, enhanced efficiencies, the ability to be more agile and ultimately improved use of capital.

ITWeb Events: If you had to provide a checklist of what needs to be considered in a cloud strategy – what would the five key check boxes be?

Bak: It's not a checklist but here are six perspectives you should consider based on the cloud adoption framework: business; operations; platform; governance; people; business; a change management strategy is a critical success factor in ensuring adoption.

ITWeb Events: Why are you presenting at the cloud summit in February, what outcomes/takeaways would you like attendees to leave the event with?

Bak: As the first AWS advanced consulting partner in South Africa, Synthesis' cloud transformation initiatives assist enterprises to become cloud ready, successfully execute mass migrations, harness the benefits of big data analytics and extract the cost savings and regulatory benefits of compliance. Synthesis has been working with the AWS technology stack for many years, initially to migrate existing Synthesis software-as-a-service platforms, and through building up a number of certified and skilled development resources as an advanced consulting partner to AWS. If attendees are struggling to define what cloud economics is, how it pertains to their business and what purpose a cloud business case have, then they should contact Synthesis.