Developing a Cloud Strategy

A cloud strategy is an outline of the role that your cloud technology will take on, not a transition plan to move the data over. In other words, a cloud strategy helps you decide if moving to the cloud is the right decision for your company. But there is also another type of cloud strategy that can be considered.

A cloud-first strategy aligns your company as a cloud ally, meaning that new business technologies and initiatives will look to cloud solutions before traditional technology.

Here are 10 tips to create a comprehensive cloud-first strategy that aligns with your business goals:

Create an Executive Summary

Create an executive summary that recaps the entirety of your strategy for all departments. A summary should highlight how each department beyond the IT staff benefits from potential cloud services.

Determine a Cloud Computing Baseline

This section of your cloud-first strategy defines the terms used throughout the document. Defining commonly used cloud terminology, such as PaaS and IaaS, allows employees and key decision makers to understand the context behind them easily.

Define The Business Baseline

It’s essential to define how the cloud-first strategy aligns with your business objectives and digital transformation goals. Use this section to highlight your business’s key objectives and how cloud adoption can help achieve them.

Create a Hybrid Cloud Strategy

When analyzing the role of cloud services for a business, IT experts must consider when to consume services from a public cloud vendor or build it themselves. Adopting a hybrid cloud strategy is a common, cost-effective solution.

Identify Financial Restraints

This section of your strategy, developed with the company’s finance team, should look at the financial options available. It’s essential to address any cost transparency, visibility, and budgeting issues that key decision makers may have regarding making the transition.

Adopt Principles

Well-defined principles are essential for a successful digital transformation strategy. If you’d like to align your company as a cloud-first business, outline the principle in this section with the preferred approach as the public cloud.

List Your Inventory

In your cloud-first strategy, including an inventory assessment is essential to determine if cloud technology is useful per workload. Examples of things to consider in your assessment are the business’s mobile application and website. Rate your inventory from unpredictable to well-behaved. This will help determine which inventory is a good fit for cloud migration.

Consider Security

Aligning the cloud-first strategy with the business’s overall security strategy is key. It’s common to adjust your security strategy to accommodate cloud services. This section can also address issues such as governance and compliance.

Align With Other Elements

Be sure to align your new business strategy with existing business objectives, such as staffing and organization and data center strategies. Coordinate with the HR department to determine how cloud computing will impact staffing requirements.

Create an Exit Strategy

An exit strategy defines how to get out of a digital transformation to the cloud if it doesn’t work for your business. Contracts are an obvious element of the exit strategy, you should also create a strategy for data ownership, backup, and portability. The exit strategy ensures preparedness and planning if a cloud decision needs to be changed or rolled back.