How to fix a broken cloud journey

Are you an IT leader in an organisation which has begun the cloud journey, but after the initial euphoria things seem to slow down? Is your CEO demanding more efficiency gains but you nor your team don’t seem to find ways to achieve those?

Many organisations face the problem that after the initial success of moving to cloud, they’re trapped in a valley of death, whereby costs start to build up while there are increasing challenges to meet the demands from business. 

This is despite running a designated organisation, such as Cloud Center Of Excellence (CCOE), and utilising seemingly best practices.

Increasing pressures

Business lines and the leadership team have ever-increasing expectations, given the benefits harvested in the initial phase. However, the IT team does not keep up with the pace and starts to lose all reputation gains it ever achieved while introducing cloud. 

This marks the beginning of re-instantiating the IT team in the back office while the business takes the front seat driving technology.

What needs to change?

It’s imperative to understand that to keep receiving benefits from cloud usage, development needs to remain constant. If you have set up some best practices and assigned a CCOE, perhaps it would be good to start figuring out what are the next steps. This could entail defining essential KPIs, target state and transition phases.

For example, it’s likely that the business lines demand more efficient and timely support for their agile development teams. This is probably hard to overcome unless you “platformise” your IT to some extent. 

This means that there should be a unified view to various services the IT organisation provides and a shared vision of how, for example, the level of automation and self-service is developed across those. You may also need to recruit or partner up with talents who can implement automation function. Finally, you need to enforce the connection between development and your cloud organisation.

How to cure these challenges

In our free guide, we look at symptoms and causes of this friction, and how to change. Here’s an example:

• IT isn’t scaling to meet the needs of agile teams
• There’s friction between product teams and IT
• Product teams keep trying to duplicate things that should be centralised, which is driving up costs you can’t control
• You’ve hit a wall in the amount of automation you can implement

Read the guide

Communication is key

IT leaders should educate their organisations and leadership teams that cloud transformation is not a one-off exercise but rather a continuous journey, which will require continuous funding and some risk taking.  

The benefits, however, will be there. These include increased business fit as well as efficiency – all those things you need to remain competitive. For IT leaders, they need to learn to articulate those benefits and draw the big picture connecting the given IT capabilities with business objectives.

It’s an evolution

Navigating the complexities of a cloud journey requires a continued evolution in mindset and approach. While the initial migration may have brought excitement and promise, sustaining the momentum demands ongoing commitment and adaptability. 

Recognising the evolving needs of both the business and IT teams is essential to overcome challenges and reap the full benefits of cloud technology. By embracing continuous development, fostering collaboration, and aligning IT capabilities with business objectives, organisations can thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. 

Remember, the cloud transformation journey is not a sprint but a marathon, where perseverance and innovation pave the path to success.

Need help?

Having a cloud strategy in place is pivotal in seeing through successful cloud transformation - to be able to realise the full benefits of the cloud. It defines how to drive actual business value using cloud technologies – agility, time to market, cost, innovation - and sets up businesses to measure outcomes. 

Plus, a clear strategy provides organisations with a foundation for internal communication and stakeholder buy-in at all levels and outlines the steps to be taken. Think of cloud strategy as both your map and your compass to success. And if you need help in getting this right, our cloud advisory team would be happy to help. See our services here, or fill the form below.