Creating a Roadmap for Successful Cloud Transformation

Cloud transformation is about more than simply moving systems to the cloud. It is a complete shift in how organisations use technology to become more agile, take products to the market faster, and stay ahead of the competition. But this journey is not without challenges.

Many organisations come unstuck because they lack a well-defined strategy, leaving them spinning their wheels rather than gaining ground. Instead of harnessing the cloud’s immense potential, they often have to deal with missed growth opportunities, operational disruptions, and wasted resources. In fact, according to PwC’s UK Cloud Survey, only 16% of organisations are truly ‘cloud-powered’, creating greater business value through these modern architectures.

To avoid these risks, organisations need to begin their journey with a clear and comprehensive roadmap. This should provide a blueprint for cloud transformation, building out from the original drivers and outlining the potential obstacles they can expect to encounter. With their roadmap in place, organisations will ensure that every cloud transformation initiative is focused on creating business value and helping to deliver on the long-term vision of their leadership team.

Identifying the Drivers of Cloud Transformation

Organisations first need to clearly define the motives behind their transformation. These can usually be grouped into four main categories:

Innovation: Cloud transformation is often driven by the need to innovate and remain competitive. The cloud offers tools and platforms to fuel creativity and speed product development cycles. For example, moving to the cloud can make it easier to enhance the company’s current solutions with modern technologies like AI or self-service capabilities such as chatbots.

Relevance: Digital innovation is fast-paced, so new technology has typically a maximum shelf life of 18 months. This means IT solutions need to be constantly refreshed to ensure they continue to be relevant and meet customers’ needs and expectations. Cloud transformation ensures that an organisation’s IT infrastructure and applications can adapt to changes quickly to keep up with these demands. It allows organisations to scale IT resources on demand so they can remain agile and seize new opportunities as they arise.

Operational Efficiency: Even if an on-premises application or legacy platform is reliable and meets the needs of its users, in today’s always-on world, businesses expect regular changes and improvements. When making those changes becomes difficult, time-consuming, or expensive, it often indicates it’s time for cloud transformation. Cloud platforms give organisations the flexibility and agility needed to take on those changes, and can be easily integrated with modern solutions that further improve operational efficiency. For example, cloud-based software delivery platforms can help organisations automate repeatable, routine tasks, eliminating physical interventions, thus allowing employees to focus on more demanding work. By embarking on a cloud transformation, IT teams can lay the foundations they need to make changes and deliver innovation faster and more efficiently.

Risk: As technology evolves, so do the risks, particularly when it comes to security threats. Older technologies, especially legacy systems that have reached end-of-life, tend to become more vulnerable over time, leaving them more open to attacks. This growing risk often triggers the move to the cloud, as hyperscale service providers keep their platforms updated with the latest threat prevention capabilities. This helps organisations to improve their security posture, without increasing their investment in cybersecurity.

The decision to move to the cloud is often driven by a combination of these drivers rather than just one. By understanding what success looks like at the start of their journey, organisations can ensure their cloud transformation delivers maximum value.

Overcoming Common Challenges in Cloud Transformation

Once organisations have identified the drivers of their journey, the next step is to think about how they will get around potential obstacles. One major hurdle is the lack of application owner buy-in. Initiatives typically start from central IT teams or the CTO’s office, but success relies on the owners of the services being transformed to buy in. If they don’t see the value in moving their applications to the cloud it will be a challenging journey, and they will resist. Early engagement and getting buy-in from these stakeholders are key to a smooth transformation.

Organisations also need to think about how they will build their cloud environment. There is no one-size-fits all solution, so a hybrid cloud strategy may be required. To inform this strategy, organisations should do a full assessment of all their applications, considering the regulatory, performance, security and total cost of ownership (TCO) implications of moving to the cloud. Automated platforms can speed up this process and eliminate human error, significantly reducing risk.

Preserving institutional knowledge is also a key challenge. Technology typically outlives the tenure of most employees who work with it, so critical systems knowledge can erode over time. To combat this, organisations should have robust documentation practices and knowledge transfer programs to preserve the understanding of their application and data landscape. This will speed up modernisation programs by eliminating the need to assess and document existing systems at the start. Partnering with external experts can also fill knowledge gaps and provide access to industry best practices and frameworks if the expertise and documentation don’t already exist internally.

The Path to Cloud Success

A cloud transformation roadmap will help organisations ensure that the outcomes of their journey match the goals they set out to achieve. By proactively addressing the obstacles, they will increase their chances of success and reduce risk.

As a result, they will be able to speed up their cloud transformation and discover new opportunities for innovation and efficiency they hadn’t even considered at the outset. That will lead them to innovate faster and stay ahead of the game in an increasingly fast-paced digital world.