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The New Cloud Era: Navigating increasingly complex architectures to meet the growing demands of the global enterprise
Produced by:
Market View 07
BetterDevEx
Sarma Appala
Senior IT Consultant
Businesses of all sizes are now recognising the benefits of cloud computing and are actively trying to increase their cloud capabilities.
What are the first steps for businesses who want to adopt cloud computing?
The rise of cloud technology and the demand for it has only increased in recent years. Businesses of all sizes are now recognising the benefits of cloud computing and are actively trying to increase their cloud capabilities. The funny thing is, many of them already have an exposure to the cloud! Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) technology, email providers and office productivity tools all rely on cloud networks already. So the first steps to cloud adoption are actually quite simple - it is the generic tools and services that are used everyday.
For a wider cloud deployment, a lot will depend on the industry that a business is in. In my experience across finance and healthcare, which are both heavily regulated industries, the compliance and regulation in the industries means that a more considered approach needs to be taken. These industries tend to use a hybrid cloud approach, which combines on-premises, private, and public cloud solutions. This approach allows them to maintain compliance and keep customer data secure, while also taking advantage of the scalability, agility, and cost savings of the cloud.
Will banks continue to adopt cloud technologies?
Moving to the cloud does not happen overnight. It takes time and consideration. Many banks have started the process of moving to the cloud, now find themselves in a complex hybrid environment with systems and components distributed widely across on-prem, cloud and edge environments, having to support desperate tools, technologies and processes. They have prioritised their applications and processes to see which are the most ‘cloud ready’, and started by moving them across in this priority order.
The global pandemic in early 2020 increased architectural and environmental complexity, as the need for digitalization ramped up overnight as customers needed and expected simple, digital solutions when managing their finances. This meant that banks prioritised their customer facing systems for the cloud, with internal processes and systems being deprioritised. So whilst banks increased their cloud adoption to access the agility and scale needed to serve their customers, many systems have been left behind on on-premise solutions. Over the coming years, cloud adoption in banks will continue to increase as they seek to address the imbalance, In the short and medium term, most banks will focus on consolidating and refining their existing digital capabilities and internal processes before further increasing the public cloud footprint.
Over the coming years, cloud adoption in banks will continue to increase as they seek to address the imbalance. In the short and medium term, most banks will focus on consolidating and refining their existing digital capabilities and internal processes before further increasing the public cloud footprint.
The enterprise needs to assess the impact of the cloud strategy on the customer experience.
What makes a great cloud strategy?
A great cloud strategy begins by focusing on three main things. The first is ensuring that the cloud strategy aligns with overall enterprise business strategy and helps the business to stay competitive by reducing their capex and opex costs. Alongside this, the cloud strategy needs to be compliant with the industry regulations of that business. Once an enterprise has developed a cloud strategy, it is important to assess the internal cultural aspects, skills, and capabilities of the workforce to ensure that they are able to support the transformation. Additionally, the enterprise needs to assess the impact of the cloud strategy on the customer experience. Businesses often get distracted by researching potential cloud providers at the start of writing their strategy, but until they know exactly what service a potential cloud provider has to fulfil based on the three focuses above, this is a bad use of time.
Sarma is a senior IT consultant with experience and expertise gained from working across multiple members of the ‘big four’ consulting firms and large banking and financial firms. His specialties include cloud strategy, DevSecOps and Reliability Engineering implementation and transformation.
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