Table of Contents
Currently, most IT organizations need to optimize the approach they had until now in relation to the cloud, and for this, they are giving priority to the requirements of companies, customers and internal users.
But this implies challenges related to the cloud that need to be addressed by following some fundamental steps that allow achieving a design of optimal and reliable services for data management.
Internal challenges when going to the cloud
The internal challenges that we face when approaching the cloud are:
- Both the definition and the success factors of the cloud are relatively ambiguous and this causes IT managers to have frequent doubts about its implementation.
- The main concerns of IT leaders when it comes to private clouds focuses on the total cost and how to integrate the public cloud with the traditional approach.
- There are additional concerns related to the implementation of the private cloud.
- IT organizations often prioritize direct costs rather than the value that a solution will provide.
- The potential savings that result from the improvement of the processes are not taken into account.
- The potential for generating profits is discarded as it is considered too unpredictable.
- Many executives think that their staff is insufficient and that they do not have time to adequately train in cloud technology.
- They also believe that they are unable to learn about organizational, procedural and business alternatives related to decision processes in the cloud.
The cloud as a tool for the design of services
Traditional IT organizations tend to focus on technology or products and not on the outcome and their customers. But they have the advantage of having a limited number of clients to whom they can offer their services. For that reason, before starting to research technologies or suppliers, they must understand their clients and discover, document and prioritize what the business requirements are. More about this and similar topics you can find on aviatrix.
For the design of optimal cloud services, the ideal is to follow 5 steps that include business requirements, customer needs and technology: follow a strategy with services (it is very important to understand which are the elements most valued by companies), design of services (this step consists in describing the service completely and from a technological and business perspective), transition (as in any technical solution, a cloud service platform has to be integrated into the change management structure, the publication cycle of versions and its preparation for the transition, in order to guarantee that when we start up the service is a success), operations (we need to have an outline of the recurring tasks that we will need and assign them to some specific roles) and continuous improvement (everything changes frequently and the services in the cloud have to do it in accordance since the speed of response must be one of the priorities).
