4 Ways To Maximize Cloud Investments While Keeping Innovation in Mind

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CEOs have a lot on their plates today. The constant search for business advantages across industries has created a competitive culture where adopting new technologies and optimizing existing ones is critical for continued success. Companies need to stay agile to keep pace with rapidly changing markets. If CEOs can take advantage of the right cloud technologies at the right time, they can match—even outpace—these market changes.

This is one reason cloud technologies are becoming a critical infrastructure investment for successful companies: greater revenue. An MIT research associate looked at companies from different industries and calculated the return on investment for those that adopted cloud technologies for at least 10 years. Not only did the analysis show that cloud adopters saw a significant boost in business, it revealed that companies that adopted cloud technology saw their revenues grow between 2.3% and 6.9% higher than non-adopters.

Investing in cloud technologies using a strategic approach encourages a forward-looking company culture that is not slowed down by traditional methods, helps meet business expectations, and ensures that implementing these solutions builds resiliency, improves operations, and boosts the customer experience — all of which are building blocks for agility and innovation.

The following tips can help CEOs make stronger, more-strategic cloud investments that increase agility and pave the way for greater business value.

Tips for Strategic Implementation to Maximize Cloud Investments

1. Ensure your IT strategy meets business objectives.

In today’s dynamic business environment, success hinges on being intentional and strategic about adapting to new IT opportunities. The best way to do this is to ensure your IT strategy enables the business to react quickly to the changing landscape. This involves understanding your organization and customers and staying abreast of technological developments.

Staying informed about the latest cloud innovations and their benefits will make it easier to take advantage of any new opportunities in the cloud as they arise.

2. Determine the business value of a technology solution.

AI, cloud, quantum computing—these are all great technologies that will surely have a huge impact on the technology landscape and how business is conducted for years to come. But how can you, as a CEO, know whether a given technology will benefit your company or not?

An important place to start is talking to your CISO. The CISO of your company is critical in evaluating modern technology solutions. Before implementing any new technology, CEOs need to consult the CISO to review any new features, architecture, and design and to assess potential risks.

On the other hand, business leaders need to develop an understanding of the technology that enables their business — not at a detailed technology level but at the business level. Ask questions like, what will the technology provide? What is the cost of adoption? How much debt will be created? Who are the major players providing the technology, and what is the life cycle of the technology? CEOs should also understand how the business uses data to benefit the company. Knowing how the company already utilizes data also helps to determine the effectiveness of the new technology in relation to existing practices.

3. Plan your investments to match your business strategy.

To really understand if technology will benefit the company, CEOs need to strategize what the company will need in 2-3 years to differentiate itself from competitors and what technology is needed to achieve the strategy. This is where using a consulting organization can add big value by providing an unbiased understanding of business objectives and the technology required to achieve them. Technology partners can also define gap solutions and determine if it makes sense to invest in the new technology.

For example, our team at Wipro worked with a mid-sized bank that was interested in modernizing its IT landscape with new technologies and wanted to be sure all security risks were properly addressed. We collaborated with the bank’s business, security, and technology teams to assess the new and existing cloud, network, data protection and monitoring operations to identify gaps in the security. The teams were then able to recommend how to close those gaps and developed an implementation roadmap for a smooth remediation.

4. Employ cloud economics to optimize your investments.

According to The State of Cloud Cost Intelligence 2022 Report, only three in 10 organizations truly know their total cloud costs. Having messy or hidden finances is never beneficial.

One of the easiest ways to manage cloud costs is to rightsize cloud resources. Depending on the amount of cloud processing your business needs, serverless and managed services, such as Azure SQL, might be a better cost fit than solely using on-premises cloud processing resources. Businesses can also optimize their cloud costs by setting up automated scaling. This method uses automated load-balancing to adjust the resources being used and, in turn, make sure your business is paying for only what it needs.

Once you fully understand your total cost of ownership, the benefits of well-managed cloud economics go beyond stronger agility. You can also look forward to cost savings, better efficiency, and flexibility.

While moving to the cloud and optimizing your investments is the next step in the evolution of business success, choosing innovative technologies that boost agility and solve problems will ensure the benefits ripple throughout your entire organization.

The post 4 Ways To Maximize Cloud Investments While Keeping Innovation in Mind appeared first on ChiefExecutive.net.

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