Avoid These 4 Cloud Distractions that Hijack Your IT

For many organizations, cloud is the shiny object and rightly so. According to research firm Gartner, the cloud services market will grow 18% this year, outpacing numerous traditional IT solutions.

As with every new and innovative IT solution on the market, there are distractions surrounding practical use and adjacent challenges. For example, marketers communicated the necessity of having a website in the early 2000s, but few understood the high maintenance costs, possible security flaws, or extra work due to a web presence.

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In similarity, there are also distractions and contingencies to consider when adopting cloud solutions. Though cloud repeatedly delivers value in organizations of all sizes and industries, there are considerations:

1. Shadow IT: Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) and Bring Your Own Application (BYOA) are growing trends in today’s workplace. While it’s always helpful to let an employee define a job for themselves, it’s also important to keep tabs on potential security risks. Always have standard operating procedures and contingency plans when considering how you want your employees’ applications and devices to work with the organization.
2. Single-Pane-of-Glass: It’s one thing to get excited about new technologies on the market, and another to completely forget why you are using a technology in the first place. Visibility across cloud financial and application usage will truly allow for measurement of TCO while holding the organizational accountable for productivity, costs, and more. You should not have to send your accounting team scrambling for financial data at the 11^th
3. Making Meaning of Data: The exabytes and zetabytes of data storehouses keep growing and the quantity will only get bigger as the years go on. Cloud isn’t solely used for the creation of data, but also the interpretation of data towards better business outcomes.
4. Encouraging Integration: With so many complementary solutions on the market, you might be excited to connect everything together through APIs. The cloud does make that possible, but don’t be distracted. Over bloating your applications with APIs may cause a slowdown in processing and a diminished customer experience. Instead, focus on the integrations that bring immediate business value.
5. Accelerating Innovation with DevOps: Finally, there’s the connection between Cloud and DevOps. Many DevOps solutions are cloud-based, but be wary on the tools that you decide to use and how they will impact your organization. Just wanting to do DevOps is not enough – you must have a strategy to help your organization adopt principles and philosophies over time.

How is your organization strategizing with the cloud? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below or send our experts an email at sales@perficient.com. You can also download our guide below for additional information on DevOps best practices.