Organizations are continuing to adopt multicloud at a rapid pace to meet their ever-changing business needs. The always insightful Flexera State of the Cloud report for 2023 found 87% of organizations are embracing multicloud and utilizing more than one cloud to meet their needs. We’ve talked in previous blog posts about how having a strategy is key to success and that once you have a strategy, moving on to the implementation phase follows—leading into the next phase, adoption. These are key steps in the multicloud framework that Dell Technologies Services utilizes when guiding customers to success in the cloud.
The multicloud journey doesn’t stop with implementation. Just because you implement a cloud doesn’t mean your cloud consumers and business stakeholders will use it. After all, as I frequently find myself saying, the “If you build it, they will come” model doesn’t work with cloud. Cloud adoption is the phase where we take steps to give cloud consumers the applications and services they need, transform applications, implement organizational change and improve processes to drive efficiency in the cloud.
Hey, Where’s My App?
Cloud consumers need to know where their applications, services and resources are hosted in order to do their jobs. Migrating those applications, databases, services and other workloads to the cloud best suited to run them is a critical step toward driving cloud adoption.
We can’t just deliver greenfield, artisanal, grassfed but completely empty clouds devoid of the applications and services that are in use. Cloud consumers need these resources available in the cloud or they simply won’t use it. The Dell Technologies Consulting team has helped migrate thousands of workloads safely and securely to the cloud to help our customers drive adoption of their cloud investments.
Give Your Apps a Cloud-Native Makeover
Saying an application is “cloud native” just means an application is built and designed from the ground up to take advantage of the architecture of the cloud. That means utilizing things like microservices, containerization and being built for scalability at their core. Most organizations today have a mix of legacy applications and next-generation cloud native applications, with the majority still being of the legacy variety. To aid in adoption of cloud, organizations should embark on a journey to give those apps a cloud-native makeover.
Running containerized cloud-native applications allows organizations to quickly scale their applications to meet demand and enable application portability, utilize modern development processes like CI/CD and speed the release of updated code. These changes are incremental, enabling organizations to optimize applications gradually while minimizing potential disruptions and maximizing the benefits of cloud-native architectures.
An Operational Symphony
We’ve all heard the familiar refrain of people, process and technology singing out of tune within an organization. Many organizations lean heavily into the technology of cloud while failing to consider the organizational and operational change required to adopt cloud successfully. When all three elements work together, organizations have a better chance of driving cloud adoption with fewer speed bumps.
What does that mean exactly? Implementing a true cloud operating model means the organization has put in place a governance structure, financial transparency and security policies that span across all the cloud platforms they’re using. In addition, organizations need to develop a clear set of cloud roles and associated responsibilities for their teams. Cloud is transformative, and many team members will need to transition into new cloud-focused roles from their legacy roles. Implementing a training plan to help team members cultivate these new skills will be critical in the adoption phase.
By putting all these pieces together, an organization can streamline cloud operations and ensure efficient use of cloud resources with a common set of policies and roles along with clear financial transparency.
Be An Efficiency Detective
Every organization has bottlenecks and areas where inefficiency reigns supreme, and that is especially true within IT. Just like in manufacturing, organizations can use a process called value stream mapping to analyze all the steps required for a service or process from beginning to end. By seeing the full process, organizations can become efficiency detectives and begin to hunt for inefficiency or waste within their processes.
In the adoption phase, an organization should look at all aspects of their IT and application lifecycle to find where introducing automation or more efficient processes can help improve performance. Even small incremental improvements can introduce speed and agility into a multicloud infrastructure, which pays dividends in the future—especially as cloud environments scale.
The adoption phase is a pivotal stage in the cloud adoption framework, enabling organizations to unlock the full potential of cloud technologies and their cloud investments. By accelerating migration, refactoring applications, implementing a cloud operating model, investing in training and embracing continuous improvement through value stream mapping, businesses can accelerate cloud adoption in their organizations.
Dell Technologies Consulting Services have helped many customers successfully adopt cloud platforms that meet their business needs. Click here to learn more about how we can help your organization on the path to cloud adoption.
