6 steps to adopt a cloud strategy

After two years of a pandemic that has accelerated the adoption of cloud computing, it is likely that most companies have already implemented a strategy to migrate or begin this journey to the cloud. For those who have not yet taken the step, these are the 6 steps that should be followed to establish a cloud strategy.

1. Change your mindset

The decision to implement the cloud is primarily a business strategy, rather than an IT strategy. The company must be clear about the reasons why it wants to go to the cloud and, according to them, design a strategy. Competitive advantages and opportunities to grow exponentially are, without a doubt, key in this decision. The power that the cloud provides in terms of agility and flexibility is what is making the technology grow in recent years. It must also be clear that the cloud is not only an environment to host the infrastructure, but a space from which a strategy must be created and a change in mentality must be promoted to be faster, safer, more scalable and cheaper.

2. Analyze the current and desired state

A good analysis is essential to plan the path well. It is very important to know where we are and where we want to be, both in relation to the Service Level Agreement (SLA) marked and the continuity plan as well as in security and data protection. Similarly, it is essential to establish a clear governance and have all possible metrics and alerts.

The decision to implement the cloud is primarily a business strategy, rather than an IT strategy

3. Choose the cloud model

This prior analysis will help us choose the cloud model, both the type of cloud (public, private or hybrid) and the type of service (IaaS, SaaS or PaaS). We will also know if we are interested in having a multicloud or if we want to be more faithful to a single provider. On many occasions it will depend on the level of maturity of the equipment or applications. At Wolters Kluwer, as a provider of management software, we are clear that the path is the public cloud and, for this reason, we took the leap years ago without intermediate steps such as the hybrid one, since we believe that it would imply assuming more security risk by have multiple focus points. Likewise, we prefer to focus on a single provider in order to get the most out of it and for the teams to be focused on that expertise.

4. Design and secure the plan

The next step is to form the team or people who will be in charge of designing and implementing the infrastructure in the cloud. But also to train and accompany the rest of the people who will work to a greater or lesser extent in the cloud in the cultural change that the cloud will bring with it. Once the plan has been designed, we have to make sure that it includes all the previously analyzed security, availability and data integrity parameters. Without forgetting that the teams have the appropriate knowledge and well-defined and clear roles.

5. Implement the strategy

The implementation can have very different times and can last from a few weeks to many months, depending on the size of the project, but we must always be guided by a roadmap with several milestones in order to verify progress. Having good leaders trained and empowered spreading best practices will help accelerate cloud adoption.

6. Keep moving forward and growing

You are already in the cloud, the game has only just begun. It is essential not to stop and continue advancing and growing together with the cloud provider, the new technologies and features that will appear and to which we must be attentive and agile to take full advantage of it.