Building A Cloud Strategy To Boost Digital Innovation

By Yasser Zeineldin

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This article discusses why it is necessary to build an organisational cloud strategy and how to go about building one.

The role of cloud as an IT and business tool is now more than a decade old. Globally, IT departments are migrating their business applications from on-premises to public cloud platforms at a continuous pace. Gartner, a global market research player, expects this rate to pick up as legacy systems reach their end-of-life support and migration projects get underway.

However, on the flip side, many enterprise chief information officers (CIOs) have still to announce and formulate a well-defined cloud strategy for their internal IT and business end users. If well thought-out and articulated, a cloud strategy can become a blueprint for the roll-out of revamped and forward-looking digital processes, job roles and change in organisational structures.

Here is a checklist of pointers on how CIOs can build their cloud strategies.

List expected business outcomes

The starting point for building any cloud strategy is to get a complete picture of the desired business outcomes over short and medium terms. At this stage, it is important to focus on benefits from the point of view of business end users rather than IT end users. A successful cloud strategy sets up a culture of self-service across the organisation, adding in new business end users into the organisation’s connected network, thereby fostering a culture of self-driven innovation.

Are cloud and digital strategies aligned?