A cloud migration can be carried out to achieve one of two goals:
- Simply moving data and applications to the cloud for agility benefits.
- Creating enterprise-wide value.
If you want to maximise the full ROI of cloud migration, the second option should be your objective. Cloud adoption in some or most areas of business is becoming increasingly widespread. But few organisations that do this report holistic benefits from this investment, causing them to rethink their transformation journeys.
So what can you do to make cloud migration work to its full potential for you and get the best return on investment?
Understanding the Cloud’s True Value
Organisations achieve positive change through cloud migration by modernising their architecture by taking currently-migrated applications and connecting them to services from Cloud Service Providers. This enables the adoption of enterprise technologies like ERP to access massive innovation capabilities.
By modernising, you pave the way for integrating things like:
- AI.
- Predictive analytics.
- The IoT.
These things can be instrumental in maximising ROI from cloud investment. This can facilitate comprehensive benefits for scalability and agility, enabling a greater focus on results-driven tasks instead of low-value operations like data management and reporting.
The Importance of Strategy
As a starting point, you should look beyond migration. Adopting the cloud bit-by-bit may have felt right at the beginning, but this approach limits potential. Simply switching to cloud hosting may offer some infrastructure savings and give you somewhat greater agility using the cloud architecture, but it lacks strategy.
Instead, we should consider a couple of concepts:
- Cloud 2.0 – Also known as cloud-powered, this is a strategic method with a broader vision.
- Beyond Migration – This is having clear intent about when, where and why your organisation is shifting to cloud technology.
Having a roadmap of the potential capabilities right from the outset allows you to visualise how you could reimagine your operations.
The strategy could involve multiple steps, and you may need to step back to refresh your existing cloud strategy. It may also involve modernising everything that is already in the cloud, supercharging data and leveraging services from many third-party providers. This will lead to reinventing the front office with next-gen business models and the replacement of ageing applications.
A strategic approach could look like this:
- Assessing and planning, identifying the data and applications to move to the cloud.
- Choosing the right cloud service provider to meet your requirements.
- Monitoring and optimising after the migration takes place.
- Training staff.
- Focusing on security and compliance.
The Role of Cloud Costs in ROI
Before accessing the potential cost savings, you will have to make some investments. The simple advantages of migrating to the cloud revolve around infrastructure; you can shut down data centres and servers and move your data and apps to the cloud providers.
In doing this, it’s important to not simply assume that you will make the best possible cost savings. There should be detailed, accurate calculations regarding things like:
- Compute and storage requirements.
- Implementing risk controls.
- Network bandwidth expenses.
- Support costs.
Other costs associated with cloud migration include architecture assessments, employee training and more. Ultimately, the costs you incur from cloud migration will depend on your goals for it. This is why a comprehensive cost calculation framework tailored to your objectives is important.
The good news is that there are substantial cost savings to be accessed from cloud migration if you do it right. This is why it’s so important to prioritise your main business goals and emphasise specific cloud transformations.
Leverage Collaboration to Achieve Maximum Cloud Migration ROI
The aforementioned Cloud 2.0 is all about ensuring your cloud migration aligns with your business strategy. This requires collaboration between leadership individuals and their team from the outset to ensure the right investments are made at the right times.
CIOs at cloud-powered companies tend to work closely with others like the CISO, CEO, CDO and COO when creating and strategizing for cloud transformation. With new architectures comes learning and adoption of new technologies. And the roles of the individuals involved will be stretched, dealing with the complexity of running legacy systems in parallel with the cloud as the transition takes place.
If collaboration is prioritised, it can have many knock-on effects. For example, when CIOs and CFOs collaborate, they can get a more accurate picture of how the cloud can change the organisation’s fiscal model, resulting in a more comprehensive approach that ultimately yields better results.
Transformation That Truly Works
Trust is fundamental to cloud 2.0, so it should be a strong factor of transformation initiatives. The foundations of the next wave of innovation include:
- AI.
- The metaverse.
- Web3.
None of these should be ignored by forward-thinking initiatives, and none of them would be possible without the cloud.
When companies take an honest look at the technologies that are providing the most value for them, strategy must be at the forefront. The cloud can bring abundant opportunity, but only if you approach it in the correct way. There must be a balanced look at enterprise-wide transformation versus areas where transformation isn’t really necessary.
Ultimately, that elusive ROI from cloud migration is about balance. It’s about identifying areas that need improvement and areas that don’t, then finding the most appropriate solutions to deliver on both fronts. This enables you to optimise spending on investment in the technology, avoiding unnecessary costs and replacing expensive processes with more cost-effective alternatives.
Final Thoughts
Many find that getting maximum ROI from cloud migration is challenging, but it is worth the effort. The far-reaching capabilities of cloud-enabled technologies like ERP solutions can facilitate cost optimisations and profitability improvements throughout your entire organisation. But this requires a strategic approach and careful analysis of cost vs benefit in every decision you make.
Take the time to understand your business and the capabilities of cloud migration. Collaborate with business leaders and their teams to get a more complete picture of the impact of your decisions. With the right approach, you can get the greatest possible return on your cloud migration investment and take your place among the few businesses that are getting the full benefit of this ever-evolving technology.
Why choose Eventura for your digital transformation journey?
Eventura have been helping businesses in their digital transformation journey for two decades. From the implementation of industry-leading ERP solutions such as Sage 200 and NetSuite, to helping them move their entire operations to the cloud and away from costly and restrictive on-premise solutions.
As well as being NetSuite Solution Providers, Sage 200 Partners and Microsoft Gold Partners, we also offer a wide range of managed IT services, meaning we can take your business as a whole and help it achieve digital transformation.
If you would like to speak to one of our experts, you can request a free call back here.
