Cloud adoption strategy is like planning a road trip. You must know your destination, stop overs, when you want to be there, and what it’s going to take.

Without a strategy you are most likely to end up with random choices of unplanned activities, and land with cloud solutions that may or may not be fulfilling your business requirements.

Therefore, a well thought out strategy for cloud adoption is a must if you are seriously considering improving your IT operations.

What is a cloud adoption strategy?

A strategy for cloud adoption is a process to figure out IT functions that can substantially improve productivity and efficiency with cloud-enabled capabilities and contribute to fulfilling your business goals.

According to the latest research, Gartner, Inc. forecasts that public cloud spending will grow 23.1% in 2021 to total $332.3 billion, up from $270 billion in 2020.

So, the trend is going up, and if considering making the shift, start putting together a plan to move to the cloud.

There are many ways to climb a mountain, but some are much better than others. Similarly, there are several ways to strategic planning for cloud adoption. In this article, we are sharing three effective strategies from our experience assisting clients.

1. Internal Assessment for Cloud

2. Research & Evaluation

3. Test

1.Internal Assessment for Cloud

Factors for cloud drive

Remember the road trip planning? Likewise, define where do you want to improve, what do you want to do to bring in changes, how, who will all be involved, and when do you anticipate to making the changes at what cost.

To get the best results on your assessment, a proven way is to classify your overall IT into four sections. Software, Platform, Infrastructure, and Human Resources.

Now, for each section assess the current deployment model, licenses, costs, performance, user experience and then identify scope for improvement or change.

One of our clients was discussing switching from Onscreen Takeoff, a windows-based software to a web based Sofware as a service option, a different vendor. Reasons behind, it is just an example of scope for change.

Another example is, moving from a windows file server to a cloud-based files share services, or configuring cloud storage, backup and more.

Work through all your sections, and each section could have sub sections, and or items. In the Infrastructure, you may have to list all servers, networking, storage, security and any other IT associated items.

Define your outcomes

Conduct an internal audit, build a business use case to determine the problem, and what you would wish to accomplish. It will help get an overview and insights into decision making to either choose a fully cloud-operated or a hybrid.

Focus on your outcomes. Examples of outcome are –

• Reduce 25% of on-premises IT costs by 1January 2022.

• Empower users to access applications and data from anywhere with simple to use remote solutions within 3 months.

• Create a business continuity model that allows continuing operations during an unexpected service disruption and will be effective in one month to test.

Financial Analysis

As part of the assessment, document specific costs associated with the items you are planning to make the shift. Ensure that the unit costs do not include any bundle components. The financials are supporting information for each section of the overall assessment, so you’d be able to compare pricing for options that you’d search for in the next phase.

2.Research & Evaluation

The research phase for a cloud-based strategy must aim in discovering and learning about the cloud providers and competition. Select a cloud provider who has a presence of regional, national, or international, and demonstrates reliability.

The top three players are Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google. After selecting one of these names or a competition, research for a service provider partner with domain expertise and has successfully assisted clients in deploying and configuring cloud-based solutions related to your requirements.

Microsoft embraces its partner community and helps partners to cater to the needs of the clients indirectly. Partners become the first point of contact for client services and demonstrate responsibility for both clients and Microsoft.

In addition, support is a crucial aspect of the services. Once you do your research and gather the necessary information to decide, the evaluation phase kicks in.

The top four things to include in your evaluation:

• Expertise in providing managed cloud services

• Response and Availability, Support

• Costs

• Security & Compliance

Prepare a scorecard with selection criteria and give scores to each provider in your list to see who meets your requirement. Thereafter, meet with the provider whom you find fit, clarify your questions, and get responses. The point is to filter the best team that could be with you and support.

3.Test

The testing phase is to get real-time experience of the cloud-enabled solutions and help you distill further. It could be a demo, or a test runs on a server, etc.

What would you test? It depends on what is the problem, the end solution, and the outcome.

One of our clients, a specialty contractor, was considering moving from on-premises to the cloud. After meeting with them and discussing a road map, we built a test server in Azure and had them test for a few days. User acceptance testing is a widespread practice, and after successful testing and feedback, we migrated their workloads to the cloud server.

Similarly, you would be testing a Software as Services or a Server. If your outcome is satisfactory in the test phase, then make the next move. For server, application or data migration, it requires planning. Work with your managed services provider, do some learning on your own, and start rolling.

Our thoughts

A cloud adoption strategy is to outline what will change, why, how, and with what. The three-step approach, Internal assessment, Research & Evaluation, and Test is simple yet effective for companies looking to migrate to the cloud.

Overall, the aim of having an adoption strategy for the cloud is to ensure that you do not end up with random options which do not satisfy your business requirements.

AECCloud is a Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider with expertise in Microsoft Azure. We work with clients to provide a road map for cloud adoption strategy and assist in deploying cloud solutions and migration. For a no obligation consultation, contact us now. We’d coordinate, learn your objectives and help steer you in the right direction.