The cloud ecosystem

Organizations are no longer moving to the cloud just to save on expenses, but mainly to increase profit, and as a way of promoting business growth and innovation. Here are four tips to help you reap the benefits of the cloud ecosystem

As COVID-19 came into our lives, it brought with it the need for a rapid release of digital products, or even a ‘digital transformation’. Organizations that already migrated to the cloud ahead of time were at an advantage, thanks to significantly reduced time-to-market processes. The flexibility that characterizes the cloud, in terms of ability to increase and reduce the use of compute resources as needed, has enabled organizations to survive and even grow their business, in this period of uncertainty. Other organizations that did not plan to migrate to the cloud, or for whom such a transition was only part of their future plans, changed their strategy and accelerated the transition processes.
The cloud today offers a complete ecosystem with a variety of solutions, such as data & analytics, information security, cyber, and accelerated connectivity. Here are four tips to help you properly navigate your organization’s transition to the cloud, and make the most of its potential.

1) Start with a deep study of your existing systems, set goals and prepare a strategic plan.

An essential step for the success of your cloud journey is to define your goals and how moving to the cloud can help you achieve them. Begin with a preliminary assessment of the existing systems in your organization to define bottle necks and see what can be improved, in light of both what is going on today and any business challenges you may face going forward. Next, explore how transitioning to the cloud can bring value to your organization by helping you make the necessary improvements and solve those challenges. Finally, conduct a feasibility study so that you know practically what assets can be moved to the cloud, and make the transition to the cloud as smooth as possible. This will form the basis of your strategic plan.
Bear in mind that you should make your business goals your priority. The goal is business growth and getting the most out of the potential in the cloud, and not to just continue functioning as before, only in the cloud. Also, while some organizations seek to move to the cloud in order to reduce costs, it is often worth increasing your budget initially in order to drive the organization to future profitability, growth and innovation.

2) A successful transition to the cloud involves education and change within your organization.

When an organization plans its cloud migration, it’s a good idea to appoint a team to lead the move, and prepare them well for the journey. The team selection process should include assessing the skills of your existing professionals, identifying any knowledge gaps, and bridging them either through appropriate training for existing staff or by hiring additional staff. If you are a manager or member of such a team, it is important to be aware of the possibilities inherent in the transformation to the cloud, and how to use them.
You should take into account the fact that the change required by your cloud migration will impact on various information systems roles (infrastructure personnel, information security, development leaders) as well as procurement, budget control, regulatory affairs, risk management and legal advisory roles.
By pre-defining the team leading the move and properly preparing them so that they can continue to independently promote the use of the cloud in the organization, your employees will be more connected to the transition, and committed to the success of the cloud journey.

3) Transitioning to the cloud opens the door to many possibilities in terms of efficiency and business growth. Keep an open mind in order to get the most out of it.

Migrating to the cloud presents possibilities for changing and managing business operations, which, if implemented, are of immense value to an organization. Among the many examples are NLP, automation processes (RPA), customer service support bots, account closing, credit card payment processes and much more – so keep an open mind about how far to take your cloud journey.
Already today, organizations in Israel understand the enormous potential that lies in cloud data & analytics services – according to the STKI 2021 survey, about 55% of organizations in Israel plan to move to a public cloud for data & analytics purposes. You can even take it one step further. Try to think, and encourage your colleagues and employees to do so, of smarter ways to conduct business operations using the services and technologies that the cloud enables. This can give your organization a significant competitive advantage and a unique market position.

4) Integrate information security and cyber security as an integral part of your cloud migration strategy.

Many organizations are cautious about moving to the cloud due to security considerations. But, the truth is that most cloud security failures are due to misconfiguration errors by the organizations themselves. In fact, according to Gartner, by 2025 99% of cloud security failures will be the result of such mistakes. It is therefore very important to integrate information security and cyber experts into your cloud migration team right from the start, instead of addressing cloud transition and cyber security completely separately, with different teams, during different phases of the migration. They’re going to be working together at some point down the road anyway, so you may as well encourage collaboration right from the start.
The move to the cloud has also long been an opportunity to implement innovative information security and cyber tools, which can greatly promote the resilience of your organization, not only offering better protection, but also giving you an advantage in terms of your customers knowing they can trust you.
The bottom line is that it’s important to realize that information security in the cloud is not a ‘problem’: leading public cloud providers invest a lot of resources in information security and core applications, which are of paramount importance to the success of the digital transformation. In fact, for most organizations, moving to the cloud can offer a significant increase in the level of their information security. Moreover, the cost of implementing information security in the cloud will almost always be lower than the cost of implementing the same level of security on-prem.

If done right, migrating to the cloud can have a significant impact throughout your organization. While it can be a huge undertaking, the pay-off is well worth the investment of time, budget and resources. In fact, the future of your business could depend on it.

By Haim Ben Hayim, Business Manager of Matrix Cloudzone