Is there too much analysis paralysis during Cloud Adoption?

Is there too much analysis paralysis during Cloud Adoption?

When adopting Public Cloud so many organisations start with an “adoption” or “cloud readiness” assessment and a lot of careful planning around workload migration. Migrations rightly require assessments and careful planning and while I certainly don’t want to trivialise their importance, it’s worthwhile being conscious they don’t exclusively get you working on the technology or platform you want to get to. Building momentum is such a critical part to any change and the organisations we see who are successful, simplify and accelerate the aspects they can, and take time on others; using the technology/platform they wish to adopt sooner, unsurprisingly helps them adopt it more effectively!

 So, what if organisations who wanted to make a start using public cloud actually made a start building there rather than relying on migrations alone? After all, the OPEX nature of public cloud enables organisations to be flexible and make a start at consuming cloud services without an initial huge investment, and with so many blueprints\templates and online resources to use, surely its simple to just adopt right!?

 Anything new can be a scary place if you haven’t done it before and don’t have support, and although this approach may seem simpler, we all know there are plenty of barriers to think about. Training people, managing OPEX spend, ensuring effective governance, tight security, and the design of the environment to name just a few! Like riding a bike the only way to learn is by doing it, but perhaps we need to think about a simple and safe bike setup and support for those initial few attempts.

 This is where service providers like Softcat can really step up and develop services to help accelerate the journey to cloud, by removing these adoption barriers. By creating a secure base environment with a focus on training and ongoing support rather than relying on migration assessment activities alone can often be a better way for organisations to take their first few steps.

 We have all been there: workshops, consultants, long assessments not to mention considerable cost before our teams are able to get into the technology/platform we want to adopt and, while rushing to adopt public cloud is certainly not a wise approach, perhaps there are definitely some benefits to going faster.