The pandemic has shifted many company’s views around the cloud agenda from an aspirational “nice to have” to an urgent need.

Companies are recognising that the cloud goes further than storage - it is to scale operations, reduce costs in infrastructure and with that add competitive advantage. 

For many, the pandemic has been a catalyst in this respect. It's brought home the need for greater scalability, agility and resilience in IT infrastructure in a very direct way. When organizations needed to massively scale up digital operations and network connectivity literally overnight as the first lockdown hit, many quickly unfortunately realized their on-premises office IT infrastructure was not set up for remote working. 

However, knowing that there are still “late bloomers” when it comes to the cloud who are only just getting serious about their first cloud infrastructures isn't the same journey as understanding how to get value from these platforms when you're there. 

These organizations recognize that a new requirement has emerged to achieve digital transformation and leadership post-COVID. 

Every business now must be a cloud first business. 

They realize the urgent need to accelerate their cloud first journeys and start exploring the vast range of services/products and innovative capabilities that different cloud platforms now provide.

Here are some of the key things you and your company should be thinking about as you prepare for as a “cloud first business”.  

1. Price should not be the deciding factor 

The most common mistakes many organisations make earlier on in their journey is to focus predominantly on the price and hoping to ensure the lowest overall cost by comparing against different cloud providers. 

Ultimately that’s not the way to do it. In fact, it’s counterproductive. Whatever cost reductions a company thinks it is making ends up hurting the organization in the long run. For example, typically speaking companies later down the line realise suppliers use different cloud providers that are not compatible with theirs and eventually you end up having to establish different processes for each cloud provider, complicating your organizational structure and even creating additional cost.

To maximize the value of the cloud, outline your company’s goals and look into which cloud providers that are able to connect to multi-clouds if this is indeed a need that will impact your business. 

Whatever your business goals, make sure you do your research and leverage on the relationship you make with your cloud providers. 

2. Think of the macro, then the micro 

When you are on your cloud journey it can easily get overwhelming by the sheer natural complexity that a cloud transformation takes on. 

When you are undergoing a cloud transformation project, from whatever path you have come from - whether you are migrating to a different cloud provider or need to scale your existing operations, it is important to think of the route at a macro level than the micro. 

But the important thing to remember is you don’t need to jump all in straight away. You can start small, maybe even with a single dataset, and build from there.

For example, we saw this happen during the pandemic. Many organizations had to act quickly to prevent their call centers from getting inundated by a sudden surge in calls. The banking industry as such, saw call volumes increase by 65% across the nation. They were able to immediately take on a small project that was quick to implement utilising a “cloud chatbot solution” to take on around 30% capacity of the call volumes their centers were receiving in a day and thus alleviate the burden on their call center agents.

It also did not stop there, banks started to look into the details at the micro level - where they decided to use these data insights from the cloud to transform their customer service using tools that would help them to accurately anticipate call demand and other overall predictive analytics to help their workforce work efficiently with the growing demand. 

3. POST- COVID means taking the cloud to the next level 

It’s absolutely vital to elevate the cloud conversation beyond the IT function. 

We need to start the conversation with business leaders themselves to see an alignment with understanding business needs and goals with the cloud. 

That’s ultimately the key point here. When you’re all in on cloud, the possibilities for new innovation and business value really starts. 

Even a small cloud platform can change or trigger something much bigger—eventually transforming the way you operate and manage your business.

Understanding the value and the outcomes that your organization wants to achieve from the very start is vital and planning a cloud first journey that gets you there.

Are you ready to start your cloud transformation journey today? 

At Savant recruitment we can help you with starting your cloud transformation project right. 

We pride ourselves on our consultative approach towards the current market place. 

Savant Technology offers a range of recruitment and search services across Cloud, Salesforce, Transformation & Change, Analytics & Data, Security & Architecture, Development & Testing and Infrastructure & Operations. For more information please visit www.savantrecruitment.com or contact our technology team directly on technology@savantrecruitment.com

Please do not hesitate to get in contact for a consultative discussion on how we can help you recruit top talent. 

We look forward to hearing from you.