Cloud-first-strategy

Thinking of Adopting A Cloud-First Strategy? 10 Reasons Why You Should  

The evolving automation has propelled technology to help businesses to succeed. 73% of organisations have adopted cloud and run their applications on it. This is how it is completely evident how organisations have undergone a digital transformation and have turned technological by the end of 2000.

A Cloud-First Strategy helps in overcoming business system complexities and streamlining the business operations with a software solution, expediting the time for business to market and a competitive edge over the others for achieving a digital transformation.

According to a recent Gartner survey, cloud services in the worldwide market are anticipated to grow from $182 billion to $331 billion by 2022. The SaaS cloud application services have grown remarkably, and the revenue has enhanced by 80%. This gives a clear indication of why enterprises are moving towards Cloud-First Strategy no matter what their company size is for a smooth IT framework and cloud migration.

In this article, we will put up some top reasons why businesses must adopt the Cloud-First Strategy and how it empowers your business for rapid and reliable growth. Before that, let us first give you a detailed glimpse of a cloud-first strategy.

A Brief Introduction to the Cloud Solutions and Cloud-First Strategy

Today’s era is technology-oriented with faster and cheaper communication, faster transportation and perfect resource utilisation, and maximum output efficiency. Due to this, cloud computing has gained traction.

Using a cloud-first strategy, businesses can save money on infrastructure, platforms, and software. They can subscribe to a service provider for premium services at cheaper costs in place of building their technology stack and getting access to high-end cloud services with a fraction of the market cost.

Parts of Cloud Architecture

Cloud computing covers an extensive range of cloud services. In general, cloud computing is made of three main tiers:

  • Iaas (Infrastructure as a service): Encompasses hardware and software including the OS, networks, servers, and storage;
  • Paas (Platform as a service): Set of tools and cloud services that ensures application deployment over the cloud space quickly and efficiently;
  • Saas (Software as a service): End-user web software and applications delivered through cloud computing.

The Purpose of a Cloud Strategy

Although the cloud strategy is beneficial when implemented correctly in an organization, here is the core purpose behind implementing it:

  • To communicate with the approved service providers and associated services.
  • To communicate the service provider process
  • To determine the services built internally and consumed from a public cloud provider
  • To determine how the organization offers consistent policy and governance across diverse services
  • To determine protections for reducing the data privacy, resources availability, service costs, and other risks and implementing an “on-premise”, private cloud strategy to provide users with the requisite resources.
  • To identify the benefits cloud services offer to the organization
  • To identify the organization partnerships with public cloud providers for the approved service providers
  • To state the resources utilization risk from a non-approved provider and service consumption

In the next section, we will discuss the prominent reasons why a cloud-first strategy is needed for your business.

Top Ten Reasons Why Cloud-First Strategy Is the Utter Need for Your Business

Owing to the advantages it offers, there are several reasons why businesses choose a cloud-first strategy. It is important to know the benefits of implementing a cloud-first strategy for making an informed decision, as below:

  • Better Scalability
    A cloud solution offers an auto-scaling feature with which a cloud services supplier can scale the application resources. If the CPU of the application or memory usage is high, the user moves to the following resource tier. If configured rightly, the provider can do it automatically. In the event of a huge traffic spike, it upgrades the server hardware not letting customers down.
    As the companies’ IT demands change, they must have an infrastructure to expand their capacity for new demands. With cloud computing, the company can expand its capacity almost instantly, launching new applications and managing increasing customer needs. The entire company infrastructure is virtual in the cloud and the cloud provider’s resources, which are quite expansive, limit the growth.
  • Holistic Security
    The cloud services provide a secure business network. The cloud enables a secure data infrastructure in a protected security environment and ensures crucial security factors. Cloud adoption is an excellent approach to protect your company data and user information. It offers a secure network at affordable rates. In addition, cloud adoption and cloud migration are relatively cheaper.
    The constantly evolving world of cybersecurity makes it difficult for IT departments to be updated for the latest threats. Enterprise-level organizations have a squad aligned to cybersecurity; smaller companies are coerced to rely upon third-party services or software updates. The nature of cloud computing is conventionally public that forces cloud providers to ponder over their security and how it affects their customers. They have the requisite resources for the latest cybersecurity strategies implemented to tackle cyber threats. By keeping the systems updated and patching known vulnerabilities regularly, the cloud providers can build a safer environment for customers.
  • A Necessity not Luxury
    Cloud computing can be executed with minimal financial and physical resources for the company’s IT operations and for bringing a digital transformation in the organization system. Cloud enhances agility in business operations and an infrastructure service model for reducing IT costs. From the CIO’s perspective, a Cloud-First Strategy offers a better on-demand self-service, enhances scalability, resources pooling, network access, with other technical benefits. Cloud services are a proven business solution rather than developing a technology yourself.
    Thus, it is apparent that Cloud has become a necessity for every SMB and large-scale organization and not a luxury.
  • Lesser Investment
    Cloud-First Strategy can be implemented with lesser investment and offers higher performance. As compared to the edges it offers, the cost incurred is secondary.
    Utilizing virtual computing resources does not require investing in hardware such as cables, routers, and servers. In addition, the infrastructure costs for equipment management are reduced. With an on-premise solution such as a dedicated server, building infrastructure and cooling management, maintenance, and power costs are beyond the small-to-medium companies’ capabilities. Collaborating with a cloud provider offers organizations to convert the capital into operating expenses and use the savings in innovations and creating better customer experiences.
  • Easy Configuration
    In a cloud-first strategy, you need not control the hardware, and getting new online services requires capital spend approval. Many teams code rightly to define their infrastructure. A cloud-first strategy determines what the team requires for their software. The APIs exposed are an add-on benefit to cloud computing.
    For operating dedicated hardware, a plethora of applications and log sources of devices are interlinked. For the cloud, software tools integrate with the cloud service providers natively. Instead of plugging disparate applications, the software combines the logs on a dashboard and your team tracks your application performance, giving you insights into the software and keeping you informed when any issues occur.
  • A Reliable Approach
    With a cloud-first strategy, the maintenance of hardware and server is performed by the cloud computing provider. They make sure that the connected power supplies are uninterrupted. In the event when an entire data center goes offline, the cloud providers configure automatic failover to create a data center backup. A cloud-first strategy beats dedicated hardware when the application availability is critical for the business.
    It offers flexibility in business operations for the employees and management team, improves resource utilization, reduces annual financial spending, and facilitates seamless business scaling. For the organization CIOs, following the tech trends of leading organizations can be possible no matter whatever the scale of the business is!
  • Multi-Access
    For organizations, an all-time availability of data is crucial as customers access services in many more ways because of the surge of mobile platforms and IoT devices. In addition, the present-day workplace is getting virtual with employees who are accessing IT networks from remote locations. Cloud computing allows organizations to access cloud services from multiple locations and devices, and facilitate greater collaboration between people working concurrently. The increasingly complex workloads can be migrated to the cloud for unprecedented efficiency and performance.
    Cloud computing offers additional benefits if your business is located in the exterior of a city as all cloud computing centers are near internet setup. Even for small towns, there is no need to pay for office connectivity.
  • Redundancies Implementation
    At times, there can be some mishappening in an organization when you are on the verge of losing data. The cost incurred in the data loss and services at any time is humongous and incurs a hefty budget spend. Any event of natural disasters, infrastructure fallout, or malicious cyberattacks, can lead to system downtime demanding a redundancy implementation for safeguarding critical organisation data and applications.
    Using cloud computing, organizations can back up the essential company assets easily. With it, the data can be stored in the cloud rather than purchasing backup servers to automate the data backup process. This overhauls the organization’s redundancy and makes it ready for adversities. Also, since it’s in the cloud, it can be accessed from any place, at any time.
  • Infrastructure Modernization
    Keeping the IT infrastructure as per the latest standards can be challenging for organizations, especially when the next-gen server comes into the market, and you need to invest in a piece of new equipment. Cloud service providers always want to deliver the best possible computing resources as they are working consistently to build an efficient and flexible infrastructure.
    Cloud services assure that an enterprise gets the best technology platform for building its solutions. This mitigates the issues related to compatibility and performance encountered in outdated infrastructure and the need for cloud providers to buy their updated hardware.
    For any cloud or on-premise business, cloud computing is an affordable and transparent solution for hosting infrastructure, connectivity, cooling, and power.
  • Maintaining Control
    An organization has so many choices in how it builds and manages the cloud environment when it moves its data and workload to the cloud environment. For deploying a private cloud for an organization, companies can perpetuate the control and visibility for their on-premise infrastructure. For accessing the extended public cloud services, a hybrid cloud environment can be installed, which involves the private cloud controls and the public cloud versatility.
    Cloud security control protects the cloud environment from vulnerabilities. It encompasses the best practises and procedures implemented for achieving, addressing, and evaluating complete security in the cloud landscape. Organisations must comprehend how cloud security is different from data centre security before making a cloud migration and implement security controls once the migration is done.

How to Make a Cloud Adoption?

Now that we have highlighted the reasons for implementing a cloud-first strategy, here we will explain how you can actually make a cloud adoption:

  • Cloud-first Migration Roadmap
    Planning is key when performing cloud migration. Build a roadmap centred on your organization, which includes cloud solutions. Define the steps in your cloud migration process. Set a path for migration for all the applications in your organization – from recently updated applications to the oldest legacy applications. Determine the cloud deployment you would choose among public, private, or hybrid.
  • Frame a Cloud-First Culture
    Cloud-first transformation demands a culture shift to the cloud-first approach. Let your employees know your plans and make them understand the value of this culture and how cloud migration will make their jobs easier.
  • Analyse Competitors
    Learn from others’ experiences when you are building a cloud-first strategy. Research about organizations who have navigated their cloud migration journey. Also, know their long-term vision for their cloud solution.

The Bottom Line

A cloud-first approach helps organisations obtain the maximum of their investment by exploring the possibilities of the cloud in the existing or new processes. Its ultimate goal is to remove the constraints of costly and inefficient legacy infrastructure and outdated applications, making your organization innovate and scale in the long term.

There are several reasons that we have mentioned here why businesses must adopt this strategy. Every cloud computing platform eases to start on its service. Looking at the advantages it offers, its benefits outweigh the cost it incurs for the setup, which is also quicker and easier. Cloud, now, can never be an aspirational innovation. It has become an imperative investment for staying competitive. Organizations should view the cloud as an opportunity to strive and thrive in a cloud-first digital transformation.

Thinking about moving your business to the cloud? There has never been a better time to start; the best is now, and you can make the most of it today!