Has the challenge come to the cloud? 7 tips on how not to mess up

Companies all over the planet go into the clouds - a real "tech-n-shift" shift. Changes come not only from the need to use software in the clouds, but also because companies rethink their corporate strategies, the placement of their internal data and content, the privacy policy, systems, security, and even culture. Research company Gartner, based on market data, estimates the cost of moving to the clouds in the IT sector at 1.3 trillion. dollars by the year 2020. Most of these costs lead to the achievement of the company's goals for improving efficiency, increasing cash flow and overall savings.

Despite the statistics, many small, medium and large companies are still not at the forefront of digital transformation and have not yet moved to the clouds. If you are among them, here are the best practices and tips for moving to the cloud:

1. Select the project curator

First of all, you must appoint the person who will lead the project to move to the cloud. He must have the power to make decisions and be technically savvy to understand the cloud topic. The whole team that will deal with the transition to the cloud should listen to him. Your project curator will be able to take into account the different needs for business units, global implications and long-term goals. At the same time, this person must understand the current infrastructure and technology stack, including ERP, CRM, RPA, a number of business systems and archives. Ultimately, the curator will subscribe to a specific type of cloud platform. This will determine all the related suppliers, financial costs and business goals.

2. Get ready to change culture

Changing a company's culture is often one of the most difficult steps. It does not happen in one day. To begin with, the transition of the company to the cloud covers everything that employees live and breathe. This is a mindset. You need to be open to change and a new way of working. A new culture can change your mission and the ultimate goals of the company. Your basic values ​​will be updated, which will be reflected in a more innovative, futuristic, cloud-focused approach and change the brand. It should be noted that it is necessary to select employees who either openly support cloud technologies or have experience in companies using the cloud.
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3. Determine the strike group for the transition.

In product management, there is usually a shock group for large and multifunctional projects covering several departments or business units. In such a group there are often representatives of different spheres. So, when moving to the cloud, the shock team is likely to include one or more people from IT, engineering, project management, product management, marketing, finance, and support. This is a key team that will meet frequently and lead all actions and tasks. A commonly used tool is to collaborate on projects. Such as Trello, Jira, Asana or others, which fix every task with a task and a deadline. The team will lead the project to move to the cloud from start to finish. It is fundamentally important for the success of the entire project.

4. Deploy

The size of the company will determine the operational deployment. Larger companies often have a lot of data and duplicate systems and departments that do not “communicate” enough with each other. Cloud deployment will solve many of these problems thanks to the ability to centralize data from different departments. A complete inventory of all systems is required. Often, several sites have their own accounting, which require additional steps and processes, and this can be expensive. It is recommended to have a horizontal team to overcome the fact that departments do not share information among themselves. Removing barriers to information sharing is one of the end goals. It can be difficult to discover which data departments do not exchange, but intelligent data capture systems can help your company overcome this difficulty.

It is also important to find the right cloud tool and solution. This requires a meeting with the supplier and the choice of the desired option, which may require an auxiliary strike group. It is especially important to determine the supplier regarding the cloud platform. Will it be a public server or a private cloud? This will affect the guaranteed base level of availability provided by the provider, including data recovery features, disaster recovery, and downtime, which may result in fines in accordance with the contract.

If your company is not ready for a full cloud transition, consider a hybrid cloud solution. It uses existing local capabilities for storing and processing company data using web services and open APIs and integrates with other solutions in the cloud. Hybrid cloud solutions can upload a set of resource-intensive microservices to the cloud, and then export the data back to the local system. Hybrid solutions can reduce costs by increasing data processing speed and increasing productivity.

5. Train and improve your operations team.

After the cloud architecture is deployed and the systems are working, customer interactions become critical to business operations. Services and support should be provided well. This may include training current operations teams to effectively manage the cloud or expanding your current operations team with staff who are well versed in cloud business operations, from design and IT to product development and customer service. It is important to have certain standards and how they apply throughout the organization.

6. Plan and calculate a budget for expansion.

Many organizations change both systematically and spontaneously. In this and in another case, new needs can be easily realized in the cloud. For some companies, flexibility and scalability at peak times is critical for the convenience of their customers. For example, for those who are engaged in jewelry trading, customers come on during the winter holidays, on Valentine's Day and March 8th. Or a company engaged in mortgage lending, gives a lot of loans in the summer months. Cloud systems are flexible and scalable, and therefore suitable for new business models, with both unforeseen and planned growth. By evaluating your business model, you can determine the amount of computing power and storage in the cloud.
Again, depending on the size of your organization, gradual implementation may make sense. Changing the entire process in a large company may require several small deployments before it covers the entire company. Implementation immediately across the enterprise takes a lot of time and can be financially burdensome. If you choose to scale gradually, then you can divide the shock group or add new groups that will already have experienced employees for successful expansion.

7. Pay close attention to privacy policy and protection.

From the very beginning, privacy policy and the ensuing security and data protection issues have been the main topic of all discussions on cloud technologies.

It is recommended to hire a person in charge of information security. There are many factors in enterprises around the world that affect compliance and privacy issues. In the United States last year, the General Regulations on the Protection of Personal Data were issued, providing for huge fines, and in 2020, the California Consumer Protection Act is expected to come into force. According to Gartner, in 2022, 95% of security breaches will be caused by customers. Analysts point out that the difficulty here is not in the security of the cloud itself, but in the privacy policy, security technologies and technology control.

Companies using private or public clouds should manage data protection tools accordingly. As checks are conducted regularly, data must be accessible, identifiable and even editable. There is no exception for an unknown data format. Data mining is required to comply with the rules. Some sources report that the cloud may be more secure than local systems. Clients are more responsible for their local systems, because they must maintain their performance. The human factor is the cause of most data leaks, and therefore any type of implementation can lead to risk. Tracking the latest trends in security and privacy is mandatory and should be given the highest priority.

Ike Kavas, founder and CEO of Ephesoft,
Inc.
Original article .