Originally published at https://tiinside.com.br/ on December 14, 2020.

Moving from one stage to another within IT is no simple step. It’s a journey, a veritable journey through the vast universe of technology, which today offers an infinite range of possibilities. Rising trends, such as hybrid cloud and multicloud, are just some of the leveraging tools for transformation and increased agility. Implementing these solutions and changing systems and behaviors to utilize them to their full potential, however, requires clarity, method, persistence, and, above all, alignment with the business.

The adoption of clouds, whether public or private, for example, is already a reality in most companies. However, not all organizations are clear about their goals with this implementation, have defined the method to follow, or have managed to connect the use of these solutions with business objectives. Others still fail to persist on the journey when they begin to face the first challenges. As with any journey, it’s possible to correct routes, and knowing the path is crucial in this process.

Setting a direction

Every first step in life, whether personal or professional, requires clarity, and paradigm shifts in IT are no exception. It’s important to begin by understanding the business context and answering basic questions, from defining goals and efforts to achieve them to analyzing available infrastructure and investments. In other words, it’s essential to understand exactly what role IT plays as a support system within the business, viewing it comprehensively and not just as a silo.

This step also involves understanding the expected results of cloud adoption. If the answer is to implement it because the entire market is using it, that’s a red flag. While beneficial to all companies, regardless of size, sector, or level of digital maturity, the cloud needs to be purposefully integrated into organizations’ IT to support day-to-day demands and improve processes.

The commitment of the organization and the team must also be considered. As with any journey, results won’t be achieved immediately and will require everyone’s commitment. The team, across its various hierarchical layers, must be open to change and ready to undergo a cultural and behavioral revolution to adapt to the transformations these technologies impose. Knowledge and motivation for implementing the cloud, or any other tool, cannot be restricted to senior management. It’s crucial that they be shared with the operational team, the driving force behind (or hindering) adoption.

Following routes

Once the directions have been defined and the “whys” understood, it’s time to move on to the next stage of the journey, which includes the methods and strategies that will be used to adopt the cloud in an efficient, organized, and standardized manner. While there’s no one-size-fits-all recipe, there are tips that apply to any organization. The first—and perhaps most fundamental of all—is to prioritize people. It’s people, not tools, who will truly determine the success (or failure) of cloud adoption.

Another important point involves experimentation, as there is a huge range of different processes and tools involved in cloud migration. Therefore, it’s very difficult to determine which ones will be most appropriate for a given company’s needs without some level of experimentation. Adopting a process that combines experimentation and rapid feedback helps determine with greater confidence and assertiveness what should be used in each journey.

Opening paths

The journey to the cloud requires adopting several new technologies. All public clouds offer a service platform that supports application development and delivery, known as PaaS (Platform as a Service). These tools are often tempting, as they effectively increase productivity and add a series of features to application development.

However, it’s important to always understand whether adopting a particular cloud provider’s tool will lock the company into that provider, known as service lock-in. To avoid this kind of surprise, it’s worth seeking out and adopting open-source solutions developed by open communities and portable to any cloud or infrastructure. Most open-source tools have procedures and automations already built in for installation on major clouds.

The cloud operating model also needs to be distinct. Ideally, the cloud shouldn’t be operated in the same way a company operates in an on-premises data center. Managing a cloud environment is, or should be, different from managing a traditional virtualization environment.

Crossed paths

Legacy infrastructure can (and should!) be integrated with cloud infrastructure, but without losing its autonomy. Companies often want to use the cloud as an overflow for their on-premises data centers. And that’s perfectly fine. However, care must be taken not to create couplings between on-premises and cloud services, creating dependencies between them, which could lead to scalability and availability issues.

The journey also requires the creation of clear criteria for migrating applications to the cloud. Several strategies are available, such as lift and shift, modernization, rebuild, or even switching to a ready-made SaaS service. Each application needs to be analyzed to find the appropriate migration path. A one-size-fits-all approach won’t be efficient.

Continuous cycle

The journey toward IT transformation has a starting point, an imagined destination (a clearly defined objective), but never an end point. It’s a continuous cycle, a journey that allows for changes of direction, changes of reference, adaptations, and improvements. The important thing is to enjoy the beauty of the lessons learned along the way, the exchange of experiences, the contexts, and, above all, the opportunity to meet and value people.

Technologies are important, and evolution is essential. But when starting a business in the multicloud era and ensuring the sustainable continuity of any organization’s projects, people are and always will be the most important asset to consider.