The broad democratization of rich technologies in the public cloud has empowered modern organizations to unlock innovation and drive ongoing digital transformation — laying the groundwork for future resiliency and growth.
The Flexera 2020 State of the Cloud Report reveals 90% of organizations now use at least one cloud service — and both adoption and spend rates are on the rise. In fact, 59% of enterprises expect this year’s cloud usage to exceed prior plans, largely due to shifts related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But even before current circumstances triggered or accelerated new use cases in the cloud, predictions from Gartner projected cloud service revenue would reach $331 billion by 2022, up from $175.8 billion in 2018. The reasons for this are clear:
- The public cloud offers a cost-effective scalable approach that empowers organizations to start with small deployments and expand their infrastructure to support growth over time.
- It provides ease of geographical expansion, allowing businesses to reach new markets instantaneously without the need to build out traditional infrastructure around the globe.
- It also simplifies many of the challenges associated with deploying innovative technologies, as the underlying infrastructure is largely managed by the cloud provider. This allows teams to shift a greater portion of their focus to innovation rather than simply “keeping the lights on.”
Additionally, organizations are turning to Platform as a Service (PaaS), serverless and cloud-native models over traditional Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for simplified management and greater scalability of applications.
While “lifting and shifting” workloads with minimal modification through IaaS is often the quickest path to the cloud, it also has the smallest margins for Return on Investment (ROI) over time. Through 2024, Gartner predicts almost all legacy applications migrated to the public cloud through IaaS will require some level of optimization to improve performance and cost effectiveness. This is because simply treating the public cloud like another data center, rather than taking advantage of access to a broad range of cloud-native features, means missing out on many of the benefits that create true business value — particularly those related to innovation.
As you think about your cloud journey in relation to your path to innovation, here is what you need to know:
“You don’t choose multicloud — multicloud chooses you.”
This is for good reason. As mergers and acquisitions have forced businesses to evolve over the past few years, many have embraced hybrid and multicloud solutions out of necessity for greater flexibility, control and availability. Flexera reports a staggering 93% of those currently using a cloud service now have a multicloud strategy in place. However, beyond the incidental multicloud strategy, organizations are beginning to recognize the benefits of actively leveraging the opportunity to support innovation.
Companies with greater cloud maturity and larger numbers of diverse teams now have the option to select the cloud platform that works best for individual projects. This allows teams to take advantage of best-in-class services, policies, procedures and even geographic reach provided through each cloud platform.
While some may turn to Google Cloud for its rich data analytics and reporting capabilities, others may prefer Azure or AWS to support mobile applications, IoT or edge computing. Capitalizing on various differences in technology creates a more robust cloud strategy capable of supporting a variety of innovative products and services.
Cloud foundations for innovation
According to the 2020 State of Enterprise Cloud Adoption and Security report, 85% of IT professionals believe cloud adoption is necessary for their organization to drive innovation and remain competitive, citing the agility of cloud services as a key differentiator between stagnation and growth. This sense of urgency around innovation is driven by foreboding estimates that nearly 50% of S&P 500 organizations will no longer exist in a decade.
The challenge to disrupt or be disrupted means today’s IT teams are under more pressure to shift from a cost center to a profit center. An effective public cloud strategy supports the ability to rapidly define, develop and deploy innovative solutions without the need to manage complex infrastructure.
A traditional approach to developing an AI-based solution, for example, would require a highly skilled team of experts to build out the data center, procure new hardware, implement new security features and then write analytics models — processes which could easily take a full year to complete. But with the cloud, AI capabilities can be accessed virtually on demand.
All three major cloud hyperscalers (Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and AWS) offer various tools and pipelines for developing, training and running neural networks. Simple Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) significantly reduce complexity around otherwise intricate architectural challenges, including big data, AI and machine learning. These capabilities enable teams to rapidly respond to changes in the market, adopt new use cases and develop new solutions without having to build from the ground up.
Automation tools available through the public cloud also increase velocity while decreasing the manual effort of provisioning and managing cloud workloads — often reducing timelines from months or weeks to days or minutes.
Key strategies for success
So how do you begin to maximize your cloud investment to make the most of cloud-native services and capabilities, all while adopting from a solid foundation that enables speed, control and innovation?
Following a Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) like those offered by major cloud providers is key to maximizing value and minimizing risk. An effective CAF will provide the roadmap and structures to evaluate existing cloud maturity, support the development of new skills, create or update processes, and address any gaps along the way.
This critical step lays the foundation and installs the guardrails necessary to enable innovation moving forward. But beyond basic best practices, there are a few things to keep in mind.
First and foremost, avoid the temptation to lift and shift. Instead, take the time to optimize workloads for the cloud environment. At minimum this means right sizing and scheduling virtual machines or servers so that they’re “aware” they’re in the cloud.
Second, use abstraction wherever possible — particularly when your organization relies on multiple cloud providers. Moving data is costly, so rather than relying on cloud-native tech, take the time to abstract workflows to enable greater reusability, portability and flexibility across environments.
Finally, reduce complexity with the introduction of a cloud management platform. Whether you choose to build out your own or select an existing vendor platform, the ability to monitor and manage your ecosystem through a single pane of glass is essential to the success of your cloud strategy.
With the right plan, tools and resources in place, your organization can begin to leverage the power of the public cloud to achieve the agility and resilience needed to tackle today’s challenges and drive future growth.
This article originally published in Insight’s quarterly e-magazine, Tech Journal.
