In today’s world, most organizations are expediting their digital transformation initiatives and the cloud is at the center stage of this transition. Most of these organizations already believe that the cloud will play a strategic role in their digital transformation journey and are adopting the cloud at scale.

A study by 451 Research indicates that more than 88% of the respondents have a clear cloud direction and only 8% are yet to embark on the cloud journey.

When an enterprise plans their cloud adoption strategy, they look for a partner with the requisite expertise to help them choose a cloud platform and drive the cloud journey that is designed and deployed as per the best practices. By embracing cloud innovations, enterprises focus on leveraging the multifaceted benefits such as OPEX consumption model, scalability, agility, and the DevOps methodology to further modernize their applications.

Dialing down into the details of a cloud adoption journey, a cloud partner is ideally expected to:

• Help in deciding the cloud platform/hyperscaler by assessing the current IT delivery strategy. This includes identifying the application areas appropriate for the cloud, analyzing the current architecture, assessing regulatory requirements, defining a migration strategy, selecting a cloud platform, weighing the cloud benefits during the onboarding and operation phases, and identifying the cost of cloud adoption.
• Drive the design and deploy phases. A cloud partner can help to design the high-level architecture, bring the relevant stakeholders to the table, define the adoption roadmap, deploy and configure as per the best practices, provide support for automation and orchestration, migrate workloads, standardize processes and operating models, train the people on cloud security best practices, and help the customer set up cloud governance. This phase also sees a great change from traditional IT to agile, Dev/Sec Ops operations.
• Review the results and leverage the benefits during the operating period. While there will be a significant reduction in capital cost, the operating cost might shoot up and this will require monitoring of the monthly expenditure.

Knowledge Partnership: Key to Successful Cloud Adoption

During the adoption, cloud governance and cloud security encompass all phases with data locality and regulatory requirements playing a vital role in shaping this journey.

An integration partner can help a customer through the design-build-deploy phases but to truly achieve excellence there is a need for strategic direction throughout the cloud adoption journey. Right from the first contact, assessment, building and deploying, and operational phase, customers need to engage with consulting partners that can provide a strategic direction to the cloud journey. Such partners can help in defining the core workloads as per the business requirements, guide the integration team to mitigate uncertainties and lower risks, utilize partnerships to deliver confidence, increase efficiency, effectiveness, and business agility, and respond more effectively to regulatory demands. A consulting partner essentially plays an advisory role, helping the customer keep their technological cloud adoption aligned with strategic and business objectives.

Customers can choose separate entities for integration and consulting, but choosing a single firm to provide both aspects have obvious benefits such as a single point of contact and responsibility and accountability toward the main objective of cloud adoption.

HCLTech’s Cloud Smart is an excellent example of a perfect blend of consulting and integration expertise for any enterprise cloud adoption journey. HCLTech brings most of the leading hyperscalers/cloud providers, integration partners and technology providers with their dedicated business units, thousands of industry use cases and certified professionals to help customers achieve excellence throughout their digital transformation and cloud adoption journey. Cloud Smart’s cloud-first and cloud-native principles enable enterprises to achieve their business goals. By using Cloud Smart, customers can take intelligent decisions to make their businesses more resilient and profitable.