With today’s business transformation led by cloud, migration frenzy remains at a fever pitch. Even though most cloud vendors are now witnessing slower growth, it will still be years before this juggernaut halts. But can you have too much cloud? The question of how far enterprises should go in their cloud transformation journey is rarely thought of. Read on to learn when it may be time for your enterprise to stop and reexamine its cloud strategy.
Enterprises believe cloud will continue to be critical but only one part of their landscape, according to our recently published Cloud State of the Market 2021. Once enterprises commit to the cloud, the next question is: How far should they go? This runs deeper and far beyond asking how much of their workloads should run on cloud, when is the opportune time to repatriate workloads from cloud, and whether workloads should be moved between clouds.
Unfortunately, most enterprises are too busy with migration to consider it. Cloud vendors certainly aren’t bringing this question up because they are driving consumption to their platform. Service partners are not talking about this either, as they have plenty of revenue to make from cloud migration.
When should enterprises rethink the cloud transformation strategy?
The challenge in cloud transformation can manifest in multiple ways depending on the enterprise context. However, our work with enterprises indicates three major common obstacles. It’s time to relook at your cloud journey if your enterprise experiences any of the following:
- Cloud costs can’t be explained: Cloud cost has become a major issue as enterprises realize they did not plan their journeys well enough or account for the many unknowns to start. However, after that ship has sailed, the focus changes to micromanaging cloud costs and justifying the business case. It is not uncommon for enterprises to see the total cost of ownership going up by 20% post cloud migration and the rising costs are difficult for technology teams to defend
- Cloud value is not being met: Our research indicates 67% of enterprises do not get value out of their cloud journey. When this occurs, it is a good point to reexamine cloud. Many times, the issue is poor understanding of cloud at the offset and the workloads chosen. During migration frenzy, shortcuts are often taken and modern debt gets created, diluting the impact cloud transformation can have for enterprises
- Cloud makes your operations more complex: With the fundamental cloud journey and architectural input at the beginning more focused on finding the best technology fits, downstream operational issues are almost always ignored. Our research suggests 40-50% of cloud spend is on operations and yet enterprises do not think through this upfront. With the inherent complexity in cloud landscape, accountability may become a challenge. As teams collapse their operating structure, this problem is exacerbated
What should enterprises do when they’ve gone too far in the cloud?
This question may appear strange given enterprises are still scaling their cloud initiatives. However, some mature enterprises are also struggling with deciding the next steps in their cloud journey. Each enterprise and business unit within them should evaluate the extent of their cloud journey. If any of the points mentioned above are becoming red flags, they must act immediately.
Operating models also should be examined. Cloud value depends on the way of working and the internal structure of an enterprise. Centralization, federation, autonomy, talent, and sourcing models can influence cloud value. However, changing operating models in pursuit of cloud value should not become putting the cart before the horse.
Enterprises always struggle with the question of where to stop. This challenge is only made worse by the rapid pace of change in cloud. As enterprises go deeper into cloud stacks of different vendors, it will become increasingly difficult to tweak the cloud transformation journey.
Despite these pressures, enterprises should periodically evaluate their cloud journeys. Cloud vendors, system integrators, and other partners will keep pushing more cloud at enterprises. Strong enterprise leadership that can ask and understand the larger question from a commercial, technical, and strategic viewpoint is needed to determine when enough cloud is enough. Therefore, from journey to the cloud, to journey in the cloud, enterprises should now also focus on the journey’s relevance and value.
If you would like to talk about your cloud journey, please reach out to Yugal Joshi at [email protected].
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