Its well-known enterprises spent all of 2020 and a large part of 2021 rapidly responding to the challenges of the pandemic. IT teams were quickly pivoted to address emerging demands like remote work and doing business virtually.
With those issues now resolved and embedded, CIOs and CTOs are again focusing on strategic initiatives that align with the broader business. And many of those initiatives lie in the cloud.
Projections suggest global cloud spending is expected to reach over $482 billion in 2022, up from $313 billion in 20201. And as the pandemic continues and we’re living with the virus and the variations it throws at us, enterprises can take on board lessons learned from their own and others experiences.
Here are three things IT leaders and teams should consider when planning their next move to the cloud.
1. Don’t be tempted to go all-in
When Cortez reached the new world, he famously burned his ships to keep his crew well-motivated. We’ve seen similar behaviours from enterprises when sailing to the cloud. Many go ‘all-in’ and burn their ships by decommissioning their previous IT environment, thinking it will reduce costs and create more efficiencies.
Unfortunately, they then realise that the benefits of going to the cloud aren’t being fully realised. Leaving them with challenges such as:
- Going back to the environment they had before.
- Communicating with the business that there has been an error.
- Finding budget for ‘unseen’ additional costs
Unlike Cortez’s army, these are usually issues that can’t be solved with pure determination and grit.
When working with an enterprise, we usually suggest they avoid the temptation to decommission and wait and see. It’s easier and cheaper to decommission at a later point when confidence and ROI have been delivered than to restore a previous environment.
2. Look at hybrid options
2022 will be an opportunity for enterprises to rebalance their cloud versus on-premises workloads. After several years on the cloud and still being unable to optimise the solution fully, businesses should consider hybrid options to achieve greater connectivity and rein in the elastic cost of cloud computing.
Some vendors have reported a year-on-year increase in customers using a hybrid environment, and more than one-third (37%) of respondents to a SAP survey said they’re planning to use hybrid on-premise and cloud landscapes in 20222.
While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, the goal should be a modern platform-centric approach to scaling hybrid and multi-cloud ecosystems. This will help the enterprise spread risk and stabilise costs, and IT teams to optimise their time and stay agile.
3. Get smoother outcomes with a buying committee
We’ve seen more buying committees make IT purchasing decisions in the last two years than before the pandemic. According to a vendor survey3, buying decisions this year will be pretty evenly split between committee – 36% and C-level – 34%.
In our experience, IT purchases made via committee achieve greater company-wide buy-in, smoother implementations and greater ROI. While it can make the process longer with more opinions to weigh in on critical decisions, it helps the enterprise understand the differing motivations of business units and the potential impacts and effects of any solution being considered.
This year, organisations thinking about moving more to the cloud should resist the temptation to go all-in, seriously consider hybrid options, and make purchasing decisions via committee. These three things will help them avoid costly mistakes and develop a better solution that meets their strategic goals.
Contact us to get expert and honest help with your cloud solutions in 2022.
Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash
