Taking Advantage of Native Features in the Cloud — Part 2
An experienced and knowledgeable partner can help you navigate the bumpy parts of a cloud migration.
In my previous blog post, I talked about the need for organizations that are making the transition to public cloud to understand the inherent value of being in the cloud. Moving your private infrastructure into a hybrid cloud is not enough. You need to focus on transforming people, processes and technology in a way that takes advantage of native cloud.
This process can be a winding road, unique to each organization. It can be daunting and a little scary at the beginning, and I caution organizations to understand that going into it. You may see revenues go down and your costs go up. But don’t panic.
The Fish Model: Cost of True Transformation
This image is one that I often use when describing a business’s transformational journey into the cloud. It does a good job of visualizing the financial “fish” that your organization’s leaders will have to swallow along the way. The Fish Model illustrates the revenue and cost lines of a typical business entering a period of digital transformation.
At the outset of the journey, your business enters the mouth of the whale, at which point it isn’t uncommon to see revenues dip and costs rise. How deep of a belly or how tall of a blowhole will be different for every business transformation — but the notion of these lines separating as the process gets underway is something to be prepared for.
The good news is that with maturity and time, as the transformation window begins to close, your business’s end state will once again see these lines intersect (creating the whale’s tail). If the process is done correctly, they will keep moving away from each other as revenues go up and costs drop.
Outsourcing to Cloud Experts: A Better Path to Digital Transformation
Today, a widespread epidemic threatens businesses regardless of their industry, size, resources or where they are on their cloud journey. A recent Gartner survey illustrates how the struggle to find and hire qualified talent to meet the demand for cloud adoption is common to businesses of all types. Even when companies are able to find qualified people, these staffers are frequently poached after only a few months, leaving cloud plans in disarray. And if organizations are just now embracing Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service, they are already behind many of their peers, meaning they don’t have the luxury of making beginner mistakes.
As a result, many organizations are turning to third-party partners that have experienced cloud architects who can offer objective advice. CDW has recognized this need in the market and developed a Cloud Consulting Practice to address our customers’ demands for highly qualified cloud experts. At CDW, we have expertise to help our customers through their entire journey, starting with assessment and strategy development, designing the end-state infrastructure, identifying workloads and use cases, developing and executing a migration engine, and operating and managing the environment. These partnerships dramatically increase the likelihood that cloud initiatives will be successful, accelerating the climb out of the belly of the whale.
We are living in the age of disruption. Business models are being disrupted by digital transformation. Benefits derived from cloud go beyond just moving an application. The stakes are high: There is a significant risk of getting it wrong and a true business imperative to get it right. You have an opportunity to transform your business and create a competitive advantage.
Winners and losers of this transformation are being decided right now.