08 Dec How does the cloud affect your business?

To varying degrees, cloud migration, affects the whole company, not just your IT department. The sections below describe how to make employees from different divisions engaged in the process to ensure that the potential of cloud-based solutions is used efficiently and effectively.

Finance

It is extremely important to involve the head of the financial department in the cloud migration plans. A comparative analysis of various cloud models must be prepared, taking into account costs of various configurations and requirements. Costs of buying additional IT equipment, its depreciation and maintenance, electricity, rent and all the other day-to-day servicing expenses are also worth noting. You can also develop a detailed plan indicating when and how local data centers should be closed.

By cooperating with the finance department, you can agree on various cloud migration strategies and prepare several scenarios for your cloud migration, including aggressive, moderate and slow migration plans. An aggressive plan might involve moving 50% of your workloads to the cloud in the first year, whereas a slower plan might be 10%. Aggressive plans can deliver more savings but entail greater risks and higher migration costs.

IT department

Cloud migration has a very significant impact on daily operations in an IT department. Because the IT team can spend less time on time-consuming tasks, they can focus more on supporting staff from other divisions, helping them solve daily issues and boost their efficiency.

Human resources and the evolution of roles

Cloud migration often leads to the evolution of roles and functions carried out by IT department members. It is said that cloud migration might eliminate IT jobs. However, our experience shows that this is not the case. IT roles evolve. Employees can contribute more to providing higher value to their business and be less concerned with maintaining the proper and reliable operation of their IT infrastructure.

HR department should cooperate with managers of other teams and departments to prepare them for the changes ahead. Nearly all roles in IT will evolve. Some of them will require specialized training, for example  in new tools or processes.

Applications teams

It is worth consulting applications teams that will help you gather all required information, define the migration schedule and discuss technical aspects of using the cloud in your daily activities. Applications teams should be aware of the long-term vision and implications of using the cloud-based solutions.

For example, they should know that modifying the existing application and its transition to the PaaS model may require additional training and learning about the new platform. Instead of the waterfall approach, you should also consider using other project methodology that would allow to respond more quickly to new challenges and adapt the direction of the development of new applications.

Business departments

Engage business units in the migration process. Explain them the procedure, without going into details. This may help mitigate their concerns and doubts that are often the obstacle in the implementation projects. Describe the expected benefits in terms of cost savings, increased reach, improved efficiency of IT teams.