Cloud – Are You Already Falling Behind?

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Cloud – An Approach For Today And Not Just The Future!

Over the past 10 months, since I joined Microsoft, my eyes have been opened to the realities of the cloud.  In that time I have spoken to a large number of organizations who are fundamentally looking to the future.

In those discussions we have been discussing the future of their organizations and especially how they (as examples):

  • can improve their agility, lower their overall costs and help them become greener organizations;
  • will adapt to the coming 4th industrial revolution and what they need to consider to ensure their organization remains relevant. I even took time out to write about the role IoT will play in that;
  • will be able to put the most robust security and privacy in place in the face of increasingly sophisticated attackers;
  • can reduce the costs associated with dev/test in particular;

What I have seen, and heard, has convinced me that there is a massive shift happening towards the public/sovereign cloud and towards hybrid cloud (will reference both just as the cloud in the rest of this post). No doubt organizations are now moving, looking to move or thinking of moving major infrastructure and systems to the cloud. I am not speaking hypothetically here but as a matter of fact! Some are moving slower than others but eventually everyone will be there.

Focusing on the old means you are missing out on the new

For the last year the quote below from Socrates has become my favourite. It encompasses not only my own personal journey, where I have had to redefine my view of the future, but also a journey I think many organizations I speak to are struggling with.

The Cloud - The secret to change is to focus all your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.The reason organizations are wrestling with this is that we all know it is impossible to simply throw out the old and bring in the new.  Much of that “old” has been around for a long time and moving it is not simple and costs money. This is why many today still focus way too much on the old missing out the opportunities afforded by the new!

Exponential World

Looking out into the future I think we are poised at the edge of a revolution not simply an evolution as some might like to pitch. I think we are rapidly, if not already, moving to something I call an “Exponential World”.

Exponential World - The Cloud

 

In this exponential world everything stays the same until one day it simply is not. If you miss the point of inflection then it is almost impossible to recover, or at the very least very expensive, and the most likely outcome is a descent towards extinction unless you can re-invent yourself on a future wave.

It is for this reason I believe it is important to be experimenting at the very least with the latest approaches and technologies.

The minimum stakes to survive at the point of inflection is either a lot of money, to pull in external people to save you, or that you have already built up some skills to be able to move if you have to quickly. Of course you could also try get out ahead of the inflection which some companies are already doing.

Don’t miss the Cloud pivot

The cloud is coming.  It might not be here for you right now and it might not be something you are thinking that much about. What I can share though is that many organizations are looking at gaining advantage over you through the use of the cloud.

It does not matter how good you are today at running your own data center or IT infrastructure today.  Why? Well because even if you are the very best doing this it will be consuming a LOT of time and resources.

Data Center Extension
Copyright: kipandgary.com

 

Some of those costs include:

  1. Hardware refresh costs
  2. Maintenance Costs (Vendors, Warranty)
  3. Infrastructure Costs (Power, cooling, buildings, space)  – incidentally adding to your organizations carbon footprint!
  4. Employee costs to run everything
  5. Ongoing software costs even if software is not being 24/7 utilized

You should ask yourself:

Does all this work differentiate your organization?

Could it be done differently today or in the near future?

Moving forwards

My aim over the next few posts is to share with you why I think it is time to challenge your thinking if you are not doing so already.

Same Old Thinking - Same Old Results

I want to challenge you to really ask yourself: “If it could be better?”.

Think about if changing your approach could:

  • Increase your speed to market (your agility);
  • Have better quality IT outcomes (best resources working for YOU!);
  • Also save money.

If you think about that and are interested then keep an eye out for future posts this week. In those posts we will explore what others are doing and show you how moving to the cloud is not an all or nothing approach.  Organizations are looking seriously at the cloud and it could also be the big bet that powers your organization forwards in the future.

Look forward to your comments and thoughts.

Although I work for Microsoft these thoughts are 100% my own & may not reflect the views of my employer.

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