Beyond Workloads: The Changing Shape of Cloud Strategies

Over the last year, we’ve seen a significant shift in enterprise cloud strategies. What used to be about cost cutting, has become more about how to transform and digitize business. It’s all about innovation. CIOs we talk to are ready to make cloud investments to help solve business problems and bring better business outcomes. While cost is still important, the value they see from cloud goes beyond cost and focuses on how cloud can speed innovation while maximizing security at the best possible cost. If you are viewing cloud through the single lens of cost reduction, you may be missing a bigger opportunity.

IDC categorizes the maturity spectrum of cloud adopting organizations from ad-hoc (beginning awareness and immediacy to adopt) to optimized (mature and delivering IT-enabled products and services). IDC cited, that as companies execute their cloud strategy and move along the cloud adoption curve from ad-hoc to optimized, they see greater benefits and are able to more strategically allocate their IT budgets to innovation.

Source: IDC InfoBrief, sponsored by Cisco, Cloud Going Mainstream. All Are Trying, Some Are Benefiting; Few Are Maximizing Value. Sept. 2016.

Investments in cloud have evolved beyond just one thing like migrating workloads. New, day-1, born in the cloud applications are opening up opportunities for businesses to interact with customers in completely different ways and improve business models. Cloud providers are on board and are rapidly pushing out applications and enhancements that help businesses do more. For example, AWS releases new features daily and released over 1000 new services and features in 2016. Enterprises are also shifting their thinking and using multiple IaaS providers and cloud services with different tools, APIs, and SLAs. They are choosing where to run each workload to get the best productivity benefits and experience based on the outcomes they want to achieve.

It’s no longer about doing the same thing you were doing before, but cheaper. The future is about how you transform, reinvent your business as a digital business, and build a strategy focused on the broader business outcomes that cloud delivers.