Many companies are naïve about how mature their cloud strategy really is because of significant shortage in necessary IT skills and strategic approach, and the business-process change required to get to the next level, says the CloudView survey and business value practice study by industry analyst firm IDC. The study is sponsored by SAP.
Implementing measures for collaborative business and IT governance, establishing consistent processes to identify which applications can best benefit from cloud and targeted education and training will help close these gaps, according to the study.
The IDC study finds that a cloud strategy is considered mature not only when a consistent enterprise-wide approach to cloud is driving business innovation, but specifically when the lines of business are involved up front in the process. Put simply, a collaborative approach between IT and the business, centered on the needs of the customer, is the single most important element of a mature cloud strategy.
Cloud maturity is the point in an organisation’s cloud transformation when it starts to reap real business benefits that go beyond IT efficiencies or TCO considerations. This includes developing net-new sources of revenue; engaging more deeply across employees, partners and customers; and using a more strategic and collaborative approach to IT that drives new value and greater competitive advantage.
Organisations that have a balanced use of cloud – the best mix of external sourcing and internal transformation – are those where business units have the freedom, flexibility and agility to respond quicker to customer needs to drive revenue. It includes having the IT organisation right there with them as strategic enabler.
“Cloud is fast becoming a primary platform for business as organizations are freed from the constraints of building and maintaining their infrastructure and instead can focus on advancing their core business. IT runs a very real risk by not pulling in their business counterparts in their up-front cloud strategy,” says Rob Glickman, vice president, SAP Cloud and Line of Business Marketing, SAP in a statement. “And business units must partner with IT as their strategic arm to help them serve their customer and win – if not, business units typically go rogue and create unwieldy silos of chaos that destroy customer value over time.”
As businesses move up the maturity scale, they will increasingly look to vendors who can provide a more complete set of end-to-end workflows of critical applications, coupled with deep knowledge and expertise across industries and lines of business.