While cloud migration is inevitable for businesses looking to thrive in the evolving digital landscape, cloud adoption strategies are built upon conversations around cloud modernization. Leading organizations across industries consider modernization as an integral part of their long-term digital transformation strategy to enhance customer experience, drive innovation, reduce costs, and improve operational efficiency.
Recognizing that all this is not possible with legacy IT infrastructure and outdated applications, organizations are looking beyond the obvious ‘lift and shift’ approach. Businesses today are embracing cloud modernization to leverage automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), connected devices and remote collaboration platforms.
Need for moving to the cloud
Cloud modernization involves optimizing applications based in the cloud to drive resilience, enable scalability, and improve workflow. The business case for modernization requires the buy-in of the entire organization to ensure that the journey to the cloud is seamless and uninterrupted.
It is not about transferring simpler workloads with lower complexity to cloud-based platforms. It involves the arduous task of upgrading complex and mission-critical applications and processes that demands detailed planning and thorough feasibility analysis to tackle compatibility challenges.
So, cloud modernization requires an all-inclusive approach involving existing business infrastructure, operations, and services. From assessment to implementation, it takes efforts to integrate the cloud-modernization strategy with minimal service disruptions across various organizational verticals. Larger organizations with heavy investments in legacy IT infrastructure look for modernization, rather than migrating all or a host of their applications to the cloud.
Types of cloud services
Organizations considering moving their infrastructure or applications to the cloud need to identify the applications that can be moved to the cloud by conducting a feasibility analysis. The next step is to decide on the type of cloud service that matches their needs:
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Platform as a Service (PaaS)
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
SaaS is a subscription-based software licensing model associated with multi-tenant application databases. Similar to an ‘off-the-shelf’ service, users can log into the services of an application without purchasing it with the SaaS model. This adoption model requires re-engineering the application bases for the target environment in an organization.
PaaS adoption model is related to an enlisted culmination of services running in an Operating System environment. The incompatibility issues are a common phenomenon in the PaaS model. Due to the incompatibility of the source and target environments, upgrading the existing application environment becomes critical for ensuring higher compatibility.
IaaS provides a subscription-based cloud computing model for network and storage resources. It empowers users to remotely manage their servers, storage, security, and network firewalls. IaaS also facilitates data analysis and reduces hardware footprint with improved web-based application support.
Benefits of cloud adoption
Why are organizations investing in the cloud?
Accelerated business growth: Successful cloud modernization results in phenomenal growth as transitioning from legacy IT architecture to cloud-based services ensures business continuity at all times. Modernization is also conducive for driving continuous innovation, facilitating interoperability, and developing adaptive systems to accommodate ever-changing customer demands.
Faster time-to-market: Consolidating core business assets quickly and efficiently by using cloud-based architecture helps organizations adapt to business requirements and opportunities accelerates go-to-market and augments brand value.
Enhanced stakeholder experience: With modernization, you can improve collaboration across your business ecosystem, and support customer and partner-facing functions with agile, modern IT systems that provide a superior end-user experience.
Conclusion
Modernization requires a holistic approach involving existing business infrastructure, operations, and services and a one-size-fits-all strategy does not work here. From assessment to implementation, it takes efforts to execute a cloud-modernization strategy with minimal service disruptions across various organizational verticals. Organizations need to evaluate the return on investing in various cloud adoption models to succeed in their digital transformation journeys.
Define, refine, and execute your cloud strategy using best practices to realize the benefits of cloud adoption.
