Following early IT-led adoption programmes and discreet business experimentation with the cloud, we are now entering a third era of cloud adoption.
This era reflects a more connected and comprehensive approach to cloud migration that includes an enterprise-wide modernisation of culture that truly capitalises on what cloud can bring. It reflects a complete exploitation of cloud native capabilities.
Significantly, it’s also a phase that’s being accelerated by the impacts of COVID-19, as organisations seek to ensure a more adaptable service proposition and full continuity of their services during the crisis.
Cloudreach has been guiding clients of all sizes towards this “new norm”, regardless of crises, for more than a decade, its deep heritage in cloud helping customers of all sizes and sectors to bring adaptable technology and culture to their operations.
“Cloud can be disruptive and we help to manage that disruption to drive maximum value,” says the company’s head of strategy and professional services Dave Chapman. “We have a deeply experienced advisory practice, seasoned in helping customers understand all aspects of their modernisation from technology, to financial frameworks, to cultural change.
“Our scaled migration factories help customers migrate to the cloud, at pace, at scale and with requisite security and control. Simultaneously, we help them design new cloud-native apps, data and analytics to drive innovation and revenue when in the cloud.
“This proposition suits the third era of cloud adoption we’re seeing, which is now being accelerated by the impacts of COVID-19 on organisations, their services and continuity efforts.”
Chapman has witnessed varied positive and negative impacts of the pandemic for different sectors, but notes many organisations are in the middle, simply trying to weather the storm.
He explains: “Numerous organisations have had to adapt to ultra-granular remote working for the first time. This has involved rushing investments into laptops and tablets, massive upgrades of virtual private networks, a rise in the use of collaboration tech, such as Zoom, and a rapid attempt to move critical applications out of their physical supply chains to the cloud.”
I expect that ‘pandemic’ will be number one on every business continuity scenario planning list for some time
Following this initial-shock phase of readjustment, Cloudreach has noticed the majority in this group are now entering a more thoughtful period, however, when the focus has shifted to a more strategic plotting of how to invest for the future. It is through this phase that the significance of scaled, accelerated continuity-led transformation is set to come to the fore.
“I strongly suspect that ‘pandemic’ will be at number-one of every business continuity scenario planning list for some time,” says Chapman.
“Previously, cloud transformation business cases were either cost driven or innovation/agility driven. We are already seeing a shift to a focus on resilience and continuity-led transformations, where organisations can adapt their environments to support workforces and markets in a way that can be dialled down to zero or up to infinity depending on the situation.”
This model and clients’ current feeling that time is of the essence fits into Cloudreach’s scaled migration offering, which revolves around getting to the cloud as a matter of urgency and enjoying the wonders of it once there.
“Doing too much during the actual migration can end up in a slow and expensive process as you’re incurring costs in two environments,” says Chapman. “What we do is set up very competitively priced migrations to get the technology moving quickly, while ensuring each application is on the right path and given the right level of transformation during the migration.
“We also help with the wider impact of the change so organisations don’t get hit by a shock of cultural upheaval.”
Cloudreach believes that COVID-19 is simply accelerating the level of transformation that most enterprises should have been considering already.
“If it is the case this situation forces companies to change their culture to one that is more resilient, adaptable and agile,” Chapman concludes, “then it will inevitably help them beyond this current troubling time as they accelerate to a new way of thinking in this third era of enterprise-wide modernisation.”
For more information please visit www.cloudreach.com/en
