Finishing Your Cloud Journey Amid The AI Obsession

'Cloud's not done,' an expert said.

(Sean Foley, left, and Richard Amos on stage at Cloudscape 2024)

While the IT world "pivots from a cloud to AI-obsessed ecosystem, it's important to realize that cloud's not done,' said Sean Foley, an executive partner with Arborpoint Advisory Group. Foley gave a presentation alongside his colleague, Richard Amos, who is also an executive partner with Arborpoint, at Blue Mantis' Cloudscape 2024 event in Newport, R.I. this week. Arborpoint provides strategic advisory services to Blue Mantis.

There is "real value" in finishing your organization's "cloud journey," Foley said. "Adopting cloud creates direct value for businesses."

Foley gave some background on how IT departments have had to pivot throughout the years to keep up with technological advancements.

"In the 90s, IT began to pivot and [moved] from a support function to a driver of business Innovation. The 2000s gave us virtualization and mobility ... VMware and iPhones. And that's when the business was trying to minimize costs while maximizing the value of IT resources. And they got that delivered when we could provide scalable dynamic, IT environments," he said.

“Businesses wanted faster time to market. [The] public cloud ... provided scalability, it provided innovation. It also provided a glut of shadow IT that we're all still dealing with. But it also unlocked real digital transformation across businesses. The era we've entered into is that of AI and hybrid, multi-cloud where business users want insights from the vast amounts of data that was created during the cloud era. But they want more. You also want compliance and safety from cyber threats. They want resilient global services. They also want customized user experiences, they want to understand how to optimize costs automatically, they want capabilities to explore new areas of growth," he added.

Foley and Amos shared several tips on completing that "cloud journey" and being prepared overall for continuing digital transformation. Here are seven key takeaways:

- Organizations need to have a governance function that can sustain change or transformation over time, whether it's cloud AI or even an end-to-end CRM deployment across the organization.

- IT leaders should look at ROI, TCO, applications, and their product portfolio when assessing cloud solutions.

- A governing body, like a strategic governance office, can help create an effective organizational transformation strategy or organizational change strategy.

- Organizations should be focused on automation, DevOps, modern cybersecurity, a modern operating model, a streamlined application portfolio and effective data governance, Foley and Amos advised.

- Foley cited an IDC report that 61 percent of companies have moved workloads out of the public cloud. Why? Because there wasn't an effective business case or they, potentially, did not do the appropriate work looking at their application portfolio. Having the right business case, and developing FinOps capabilities, across both IT and finance, are going to help you manage and optimize cloud and other variable cost models, he said.

- You need a business case and an app portfolio analysis to understand what applications should live where and ask yourself, "Why are we doing this?" when assessing your cloud solutions.

- Automation and DevOps particularly have foundational value in the cloud paradigm.