Developing a successful cloud strategy: tips and considerations

The Anatomy of a Good Cloud Strategy: Points of Attention and Best Practices

A cloud strategy is partly organization-specific. Not every company has the same needs and desires. However, there are important points of attention and best practices that consistently arise when designing and implementing a cloud strategy. Let's delve into those.

1. Define the Objectives

The cloud is a means to achieve a concrete goal: elevate your business and make achieving business objectives easier through innovation. A good cloud strategy is, therefore, linked to a clear business model and specifies what you want to achieve concretely with cloud adoption. This could be increased flexibility and scalability or, for example, cost savings. Other organizations may turn to the cloud to benefit from cloud-native technologies and innovations in AI, machine learning, and edge computing.

The reasons vary. For example, a company selling juices embraced the cloud to increase production yield. In the previous setup, measuring equipment was next to the production line, which was suboptimal due to the corrosive nature of acids in the juices and sensitive equipment. By moving the measurement part to the cloud, the yield and efficiency increased, and the company experienced less downtime.

Banks use the cloud primarily to digitize many of their services and payment solutions. The result? Customers can do more themselves, experiencing additional payment convenience, while bank staff spend less time on trivial tasks. Cloud technology helps traditional banks become more digital and compete with fintech companies. By linking concrete business objectives to clearly formulated KPIs, you can refine and assess your cloud strategy, ensuring that cloud adoption indeed brings the desired results and improvements.

2. Evaluate the Current IT Infrastructure and Define Cloud Requirements

Successful cloud adoption also requires a thorough evaluation of your current IT infrastructure. Which applications and workloads are suitable or unsuitable for the cloud? What are the technical and business requirements that you need in the cloud based on your current needs and infrastructure? Consider, for example, an application that needs to perform real-time analyses.

Through a detailed analysis of your existing environment and defining your cloud requirements, you can choose the cloud and cloud providers that best match your organization and business.

3. Prioritize the Cloud Strategy at the Executive Level

Formulating and executing a cloud strategy is not an exclusive task for IT managers. To reap the business benefits of cloud technology, it's essential that the cloud strategy is also a prominent agenda item at the board and executive levels. How you configure and use the cloud should be an integral part of the broader business strategy.

4. Create a Solid Roadmap for Implementation

A good roadmap for implementation and adoption is a crucial element of a cloud strategy.

• Determine which workloads to migrate to the cloud first.
• Plan the migration step by step, ensuring you have sufficient time and resources in each phase.
• Thoroughly test the new cloud infrastructure before putting it into permanent use.
• Create a robust long-term management plan for the cloud infrastructure.

5. Also, Look to the Future

When formulating a cloud strategy, you should also think about where you expect to be in two, three, or five years. Is the chosen cloud solution scalable enough to accommodate rapid growth in the organization, customer base, and resources? Do you have enough flexibility to quickly adapt to innovations or changing markets and customer needs?

This future outlook should also include a good exit strategy. Can you easily take critical business data and applications to another provider and environment without incurring high costs for reverse engineering if you switch cloud providers?

6. Keep Control over Costs

Many organizations believe that transitioning from on-premises to the cloud automatically means cost savings. The reality is more complex. Without proper cost management and a solid cost-benefit analysis, the first bill from your cloud provider can be quite shocking.

Therefore, scrutinize and critically evaluate aspects such as licenses (essential versus nice-to-have), data storage and traffic costs, and personnel and expertise costs. Thoroughly testing the cloud infrastructure before putting it into use and creating a good management plan for the cloud also help keep cloud costs in check.

7. Have an Eye for Business Continuity

Something can always go wrong in your cloud environment. It's important to set up your cloud infrastructure in a way that, in the event of a disaster, incident, or outage, business continuity is not jeopardized. At Eurofiber, we ensure continuity with strict SLAs and ultra-high availability. The latter involves placing primary data in Amsterdam and creating a backup in Ireland. This provides an alternative in case of problems in the region where Amsterdam is located.

In addition, with us, you get access to a robust and ultra-fast business fiber connection to the cloud with speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s. You also benefit from excellent reliability in the form of 99.9 percent uptime.

8. Acquire the Right Expertise

Managing a cloud infrastructure requires the right knowledge profile. A classic network administrator is not a cloud engineer. Each cloud provider, for example, establishes a connection with the cloud in a different way. Among the 'big three' (Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud), there are ten different ways to interconnect. Each provider has its own requirements and specific procedures.

You need specialized knowledge to navigate within this diverse cloud landscape. Attracting enough knowledgeable people in-house is extremely difficult due to the tight IT job market. Outsourcing cloud management to a recognized specialist in cloud infrastructure and connectivity is often a viable alternative.

A Good Cloud Strategy Paints the Complete Picture

A successful cloud strategy adds significant value to your organization. It provides an overview that touches on all aspects, components, and issues (connectivity, licenses, costs, security, interdependencies, continuity, laws and regulations) that arise in cloud migration and adoption. A good cloud strategy is, therefore, the first step towards a well-functioning, secure, and user-friendly cloud environment that establishes a direct link with and adds value to your core business.

About Eurofiber

Eurofiber is a recognized specialist in infrastructure, cloud, and connectivity. We have all the building blocks in place to securely and quickly guide data transport from A to B with a detour to the cloud. We ensure that everything within the triangle of cloud, data center, and on-premises is fast, secure, and always available. Our open network is provider-independent, offering a wide range of choice and innovation possibilities.