When used appropriately, technology has the potential to transform how organizations conduct their operations. Emerging technologies, such as those related to cloud services, pose challenges for organizations that are concerned with both the types of solutions used and the various layers connecting emerging technologies.

First step: conducting the initial analysis

The appropriate way to respond to these challenges is by activating multiple levels of cloud architecture. However, there is no universal recipe, as the process of transforming a business with the help of cloud technology requires more than just its adoption; it entails building a strategy and understanding the big picture of technology infrastructure before initiation. There are three steps that companies need to consider before making any decisions regarding migration to the cloud.

Preparing the ground to ensure that migrating to the cloud will bring the expected benefits to the business is the first step. Therefore, organizations need to think beyond the "lift and shift" scenario, which involves hosting an application and its associated data in the cloud without prior rethinking of the architecture.

Companies should pay more attention to reviewing cloud migration options by mapping existing environments (as is) and projecting the total costs associated with technology over a period of three to five years, in order to determine the return on investment in relation to expectations, as infrastructure is just one piece of the puzzle. Otherwise, a siloed approach will not provide the desired benefits to the business.

Second step: choosing the right technology

Organizations need to consider using versatile cloud technologies that allow for an approach tailored to their needs when deciding to migrate.

The hybrid cloud model, which involves running applications in interconnected public, private, and multi-provider clouds, sharing data, and harmonizing processes to perform the desired activity, could be another option for organizations looking to further develop their existing cloud strategies.

For companies in heavily regulated industries, the need for rapid access to critical data and core technologies is understandable from the perspective of ensuring independence, specifically from the perspective of managing technology concentration risks, chained outsourcing risks, or preferences for different providers.

However, the hybrid cloud offers a number of undeniable benefits, such as reducing the risks mentioned above, using a more complex architecture, or simply increasing availability through geographic distribution or the application of unified and reliable business continuity policies.

For more complex data processing, a multi-cloud scenario, regardless of where they are hosted, will provide better chances of risk recovery and improved system resilience due to the features built into cloud services offered by providers (hyperscalers), reinforced by best practices developed over the years and experience gained through collaboration with other organizations whose processes are hosted in the cloud.

According to the latest edition of the Deloitte Future of Cloud Survey, such an approach can offer even more benefits, including facilitating access to multiple options for cloud services (85%), recalibrating applications and data processing to meet increased needs (84%), ensuring increased flexibility and negotiation leverage for new migrated workflows (83%).

In short, opting for a multi-cloud scenario allows the organization to use the best services and products offered by each provider individually. Some of them offer companies the opportunity to work with multiple collaborators, a factor that supports the acceleration of the implementation process and provides solutions for the most demanding needs.

To manage the complexity of a multi-cloud approach, some companies simplify the process by integrating migration management into a single control panel, using an additional layer above the cloud environment, known as metacloud, hypercloud, or supercloud, which can support a concerted approach to multiple areas, such as data security, governance, development, or the implementation of various cloud solutions used within an organization.

Third step: cost optimization

In the early stages of migration – especially in the architecture and process mapping phase, initial infrastructure analysis, and migration strategy development – it is preferable for an organization to optimize the costs associated with migration and application running in the cloud.

The concept of observability (the ability to measure the current state of a system based on the data it generates), a new trend in the cloud domain and an essential part of the metacloud in particular, as suggested by the latest edition of the Deloitte Tech Trends report, could help achieve accurate price analysis in the early stages of strategy definition.

The principles of this concept help companies manage the complexity of the cloud area, offering the possibility to find data-based answers generated by a company in the past, in different scenarios, and to configure the cloud architecture appropriately at the right cost of migration and system operation.

In addition, the total cost assessment of transformation can be heavily influenced by initial strategic decisions, regardless of the systems companies will want to use.

For example, the geographic location of the system is one of the decisions that should be judiciously evaluated in the initial migration analysis, as cloud data storage centers usually offer different prices for the same system depending on the geographic location or are influenced by local costs such as electricity, labor, etc.

Companies need to consider cloud migration in an orchestrated manner that can support the expectations generated by the use of such technology. Adopting a strategic mindset, attention to decisions that can influence the entire migration process, and cloud operation from the beginning, as well as access to specialized information, are the tools any company needs to equip itself with when engaging in such an endeavor. (Photo: Freepik)

Opinion article by Emil Constantinescu, Senior Specialist Lead, Deloitte Romania, and Krzysztof Gabrych, Customer Engineer, Google Cloud