Absence of Cloud Command & Control Center is a Barrier to Cloud Adoption in Bigger Enterprises!

Many enterprises are jumping into cloud adoption in their R&D, Marketing, CRM, Collaboration and Lower Tier Business Applications, but there are still several enterprises which are staying on the sidelines. The reasons for such a stance can be several (including lack of knowledge, skepticism about ROI, complexity of legacy applications, and lack of resources for migrations and transformations etc.) but one thing which stands out unfavorable in almost all cases is absence of central command and control center for cloud adoption. Do you think it’s a valid concern?

The sheer absence of having Service Catalogs for enterprise customers shows how big the gap is

In my view, technology to give cloud command & control to central IT is in primitive stages. The sheer absence of having Service Catalogs for enterprise customers shows how big the gap is. There are few solutions out there, to manage the spend with different cloud service providers but there are no comprehensive tools which can keep taps on technology approvals, spending approvals, pre negotiated SLAs (for reliability and security) and pre negotiated contract pricing (demand aggregation) etc. I think traditional datacenter management related vendors can fill this gap, as a neutral party.

In absence of these types of tools, cloud consumption experience can be a bitter one for many enterprises. Of course there are early adopters and technology visionaries working in these enterprises which are taking calculated risks and jumping into cloud consumption.

What are your challenges, when it comes to cloud adoption for your organization or your customers? Is central policy/command & control, one of these challenges?

What’s the best way to launch and consume cloud products & services without any major human resources impediments?

When it comes to launching cloud related new products & services; for technology & service providers, strategy is more important than technology and same is true for enterprises that are looking for such products and services.

For technology & service providers it’s important to understand the challenges of enterprises on resources and organizational structures side. Technology & service providers should play a consultative role, which should enable DIY (do it yourself) approach for enterprises. This approach will ensure organizational endurance and effectiveness for their enterprises customers.

“Cloud Products & Service providers need to promote DIY (do it yourselves) approach for their customers while providing a consultative approach as a trusted advisor!”
 

For enterprises, it’s imperative to consider workforce analysis and importance of resource retention to keep the essential tribal knowledge about the business and legacy technology in house. To mitigate disruptive risks, it’s advised that enterprises hire front end consultative services for cloud adoption and application transformation rather than bringing big teams or bleeding edge technology from big vendors in house. I suggest enterprises to introduce a ‘cloud veneer’, a small team of experts in front of existing workforce which will ensure existing workforce engagement into the cloud adoption process. This small team should consist of few cloud experts from known vendors and few hand-picked/elite internal resources. Even in case of green-field (lacking constraints imposed by any prior work) applications this approach will be highly effective.

Fact of the matter is that moving existing legacy applications to cloud is no easy tasks and it cannot be done by net new cloud experts.  Knowledge of business side, organizational risk appetite as well as legacy technologies is a must to be successful at moving an organization to produce and consume cloud products and services.

What are your challenges when it comes to cloud adoption?