Industry studies show that enterprises will move more than 40 percent of their applications to a cloud delivery model in the next five years. Both private sector and public sector organizations are on this same path, reflecting a significant and widespread turn toward what is now commonly known as a “cloud-first” approach.
However, every business in every industry requires its own map to get there. Different applications and workloads have different usage patterns and technology requirements, and calculating the corresponding costs of moving these to the cloud is a complex process. In the past, companies have found that they could not accurately budget the cost of running an application in the cloud until they actually moved it there. The first lesson in Business 101? Don’t base financial decisions on trial and error. Companies clearly need more data and a set of road rules to guide their cloud-first journey.
But the landscape is changing as we move across it, and the conversation has shifted from how to create an optimal infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) strategy to how to create a workload deployment strategy that focuses on moving only applications that are “cloud-ready.” The “build it and they will come” philosophy was great for development and testing but was not flexible or financially viable enough to support production workloads.
We find four questions most often confound enterprises as they consider cloud adoption:
- What configuration of cloud and internal infrastructure is best for the specific nature of our business?
- Which applications are the best candidates for moving to the cloud?
- What will our specific configuration in the cloud cost?
- How can we simplify and automate our cloud sourcing to ensure consistent performance?
To help clients answer these questions and to help develop and implement their cloud sourcing strategies, ISG is partnering with Gravitant, the maker of the leading cloud services brokerage and management software, cloudMatrix™. Because this solution addresses the entire IT value chain—assess, compare, design, procure, provision, operate, and control, as well as the new area of broker operations—ISG clients will have access to data and decision-making structure all along the way.
Our partnership with Gravitant is only the latest in a series of steps we have taken to hone our Cloud Solutions practice. We know enterprises that have access to up-to-date data are able to confidently make business decisions even in complex and dynamic situations, like the rapidly evolving cloud services market we are traversing now.
About the authorSteve helps enterprises think through the opportunities and complexities brought about today’s dizzying array of emerging technologies. He is a seasoned professional, fluent in how to make transformational change with cloud, automation, mobile, or DevOps and discerning in where and when they add value. He has helped implement many global service delivery models and advised large multi-national corporations on their IT strategies. Steve co-authored Managing Global Development Risk, A Guide to Managing Global Software Development. As a Partner and member of ISG’s Executive Board, Steve leads ISG’s Digital Strategy and all ISG Service Lines for the Americas. Steve also leads ISG’s Alliance group and is ISG’s Executive Sponsor to the TBM Council.
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