Cloud Power
It’s time to move to the cloud: Strategies for staying ahead during rapid digitization
Why cloud-based solutions are necessary for your company to be agile, flexible, and ready to take on new challenges.
Before the pandemic, “cloud-first” had already solidified itself as the business world’s new norm. Decision-makers saw how cloud-based systems could reduce costs and increase innovation, as well as meet the business demands of agility and scale. As a result, the world’s leading businesses were embarking on a mass pattern of cloud migration heading into 2020.
Then, that migration pattern turned into a stampede. A pandemic-
induced global shift to digitization, the rise of remote work, and an unprecedented flood of new data made cloud migration an urgent business necessity. Many of the companies that had already
migrated were well-prepared for the changed landscape—
while many that hadn’t were left scrambling.
“Organizations had to rethink how they operated,”
says Steven Jones, director of SAP & VMware Cloud™
on AWS. “It will likely turn out that the pandemic has
accelerated cloud adoption by several years.”
Embrace hybrid
In the past, companies may have looked at the cloud principally for cost savings. While that’s certainly still a key draw, increased agility has become just as important. “In light of the uptick in remote work, health care, and learning,” says Sandy Carter, vice president, Worldwide Public Sector Partners and Programs at Amazon Web Services (AWS). “Cloud-based solutions provide the flexibility and fast deployment that transformed the ways traditional organizations operate.”
Yet some decision-makers remain on the fence about cloud migration: Their businesses might have a significant on-premises data footprint, and they want to maximize the usage of these existing investments—even at the expense of innovation. In such a paradigm, a “hybrid cloud” can play a very important role in helping these organizations accelerate their migration in a cost-effective manner, says Carter.
How to get to the Cloud, Fast
Another common concern among business leaders is that they don't have enough skills available to make the move. Carter says that the way to tackle this challenge is to enable teams to leverage their current skills while learning new ones. “VMware Cloud on AWS allows customers to use the same VMware tools they've been using for years to manage their infrastructure on AWS,” she says.
Jointly engineered by VMware and AWS, the VMware Cloud on AWS on-demand service enables IT teams to extend, migrate, protect, and manage their cloud-based resources with familiar VMware tools—without the hassle of learning new skills. This enables faster time-to-market and allows teams to focus on innovation.
—Sandy Carter, vice president, Worldwide Public Sector Partners and Programs, AWS
This is one of the reasons that AWS will help 29 million people globally grow their technical skills with free cloud computing training by 2025
“
”
Align your leadership
One of the biggest challenges companies face in moving to the cloud
successfully often has little to do with technology. Instead, it’s
centered on people and culture. If the leadership team
doesn't make the move a priority, it’s easy for others in the
company to do nothing, or worse, to obstruct a potential
culture of change.
“The senior leadership team needs to be aligned and
truly committed that they want to move to the
cloud,” Jones says. “And they need to be
setting clear direction and expectations with the
rest of the organization to get everyone on the same
page and working towards the same thing.”
Being aligned is the first step. After this, says Jones, decision-
makers should create an aggressive top-down goal that forces them to move faster than they would have organically, then
facilitate cloud training for their employees to make them comfortable
with the concepts of cloud technology.
Back to home
©2021 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy (Your California Privacy Rights) | CCPA Do Not Sell My Information Fortune may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Quotes delayed at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Interactive Data. ETF and Mutual Fund data provided by Morningstar, Inc. Dow Jones Terms & Conditions: S&P Index data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Terms & Conditions. Powered and implemented by Interactive Data Managed Solutions. | EU Data Subject Requests
Back to home
Sometimes, even the most ambitious companies find themselves paralyzed at the outset of their migration if they can’t figure out how to move every last workload. But there are ways to mitigate this, says Jones: “We often work with organizations to do a portfolio analysis to assess each application and build a plan for what to move short term, medium term, and last. This helps organizations get the benefits of the cloud for many of their applications much quicker, and it really helps inform how they move the rest.”
One beneficiary of the cloud’s ability to increase agility: the public sector. AWS GovCloud (US) supports a wide range of organizations, such as federal, state, and local governments. “AWS Advanced Partner Databricks helped the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) move 240B data rows to the AWS Cloud in one week,” says Carter. “With cloud storage driving down the costs, the USCIS no longer needed to decide on limited data to keep, so they increased data sources from 30 to 75. Today, over 7,000 data analysts and scientists leverage this data.”
Using analytics and machine-learning models, the USCIS streamlined application and petition processing and improved query speed by 24 times. “It’s now accepted that the cloud is an integral part of government transformation,” says Carter.
Don’t try to move every workload at once
“This is one of the reasons that AWS will help 29 million people globally grow their technical skills with free cloud computing training by 2025,” says Carter, of AWS’s initiative to provide learners from all backgrounds and skill levels with the opportunity to train in the cloud.
The cloud also helps commercial firms in regulated industries, like aerospace, defense, health care, and energy. “Aerospace customers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies are able to realize the cost, agility and innovation benefits of the AWS Cloud with ITAR-regulated workloads, such as ERP applications,” says Carter. “The companies also compute intensive engineering using AWS GovCloud.”
The public sector has acknowledged that the cloud can help raise the bar on cybersecurity, says Carter, and this has yielded an increase in the use of cloud for mission-critical workloads. As the world at large continues to greet its own “new normal,” decision-makers at these large organizations must meet the demands of a changed landscape. Amidst rapid digitization of information and data, they must transform the way they operate. If they don’t, they risk being left behind.
Greet a changing landscape with improved flexibility
Lit optiore ptionsedis sequaer ibusanda este plia doloreiument dem estiusdam andi a du
Peliandis eature rempore heniatet ex eum velicid quam
Ovidebit prae init etur, quodis dem eumqui aut re occae sunt aspellor aniet fuga
Lit optiore ptionsedis sequaer ibusanda este plia doloreiument dem estiusdam andi a du
Peliandis eature rempore heniatet ex eum velicid quam
Ovidebit prae init etur, quodis dem eumqui aut re occae sunt aspellor aniet fuga
Lit optiore ptionsedis sequaer ibusanda este plia doloreiument dem estiusdam andi a du
Peliandis eature rempore heniatet ex eum velicid quam
Ovidebit prae init etur, quodis dem eumqui aut re occae sunt aspellor aniet fuga
How cloud migration prevents your company from losing resources and agility
How to unlock the value of data with cloud modernization
The keys to an effective cloud modernization plan
Explore more
Back to home
— Steven Jones,
director of SAP & VMware Cloud™, AWS
This is one of the reasons that AWS will help 29 million people globally grow their technical skills with free cloud computing training by 2025
“
”
How cloud migration prevents your company from losing resources and agility
How to unlock the value of data with cloud modernization
The keys to an effective cloud modernization plan
Explore more
