Cloud solutions have been on the scene for over a decade, maturing and evolving to serve enterprises that tap into the technology for driving business objectives. For many businesses, cloud transformation has yet failed to occupy a central position as a major priority. Some companies may shift a few workloads to the cloud, but fail to broadly apply cloud concepts to a business model.
In many of these situations, the cost of a cloud investment versus the value of the benefits it delivers is measured in a narrowly defined focus. It’s true that a cloud investment may require some initial spending, such as a network upgrade to ensure speed and performance for a heavier data volume. What many analyses of cloud value overlook is the future value delivered through a solution that improves areas like productivity and innovation.
In order to accurately and comprehensively assess the value of cloud transformation, enterprises must take on a broader view of the impact it offers. A common approach is to focus on activities like a workload migration to move applications from a legacy platform to one based in the cloud. This initiative keeps the focus on the application’s nature, the cloud environment it will run in, and its role in the overall strategy to migrate entire workloads to the cloud.
While this is an important step, it’s a small part of the entire cloud transformation equation. There must also be a consideration around long-term objectives and those that center on overall business value. Companies need a more holistic approach to transformation.
As part of the transition to the cloud, enterprises are also pursuing a transition from the current situation to one that actualizes the new cloud-based abilities. They must include in this consideration talent and skills and the ways services are currently being used by end users, as well as hardware, software, and communications.
Developing KPIs: In order to determine the success of a cloud transformation, the enterprise must develop a set of reliable key performance indicators (KPIs) that can serve as milestones and help demonstrate that the expected value is being realized in the transition. Examples of KPIs for cloud transformation include:
- Platform performance, including service availability, responsiveness rate, and service capacity
- Fulfillment and provisioning for customers
- Service quality levels, including failure rate percentage or the rate of incidents
KPIs help the enterprise keep cloud transformation focused on what’s important for driving the business. Overall, a set of integrated decisions then measured by KPIs can help enterprises demonstrate the value of their cloud migration strategies.
To find out more about how to accurately and comprehensively weigh the cost versus value of cloud transformation for your enterprise, contact us at eXemplify.