Busting 3 myths about cloud operations

Article Mar. 26, 2024 Read time: 4 min

By Doug Armbrust, Vice President of Global Hyperscaler and Cloud Platform Alliances at Kyndryl

Word on the street can be a good thing. What movie to see. That new restaurant everybody is talking about. But what about for your enterprise IT – specifically transition to cloud environments? Unfortunately, there’s plenty of misinformation to go around.

Consulting with a knowledgeable partner can broaden your perspective on cloud services. The right partner can enhance your visibility into unforeseen challenges based on how other enterprises have encountered and managed them. They can help you separate fact from fiction, avoid costly mistakes and achieve your business results.

With that in mind, here are three big falsehoods — and relevant truths — to apply to your cloud journey.

Myth #1: Companies will consolidate their operations on a single strategic cloud

The reality: While some companies pursue a single-cloud strategy, most will exist in a multicloud or hybrid cloud environment. That’s because enterprises need to protect their previous IT investments, merge similar environments resulting from acquisitions or expansions, and address emerging priorities with new technologies. And they need to do these things while maintaining business continuity and controlling costs.

An effective cloud strategy should address the unique needs of your business, the availability of technologies and solutions to do what needs to be done, and — perhaps most important — the ability of your partners to collaborate with you to develop systems and protocols that are right for you. Because even if your goal is to establish a primary strategic cloud, you probably know by now that most companies will need to navigate a multicloud or hybrid IT estate during the journey.

The right cloud-services partner will have the business insights and technical expertise to make cloud-native and cross-cloud technologies conform to your needs. And along the way, you and your partner can work together to help ensure that your cloud strategy will be able to accommodate changes in your business, innovations in technology and skills-shortage challenges.

Myth #2: Cloud creates an “easy button” for bringing IT management back in-house

The reality: As experienced professionals in this space, you know that migrating to a multicloud environment brings enormous advantages. But to transform those advantages into business results requires skilled management. Cloud can provide opportunities to modernize operations, implement new operational models and gain IT efficiencies. Cloud also can help enable automation, and its lifecycle management can address some of the issues that managed services traditionally handled in on-premises environments. But we know that’s only half the story.

Cloud accessibility can exacerbate difficulties related to governance, change management, cost management, skills development and more. IT services partners historically have managed these issues, and many companies have realized that “going it alone” is difficult in cloud and hybrid environments. Companies should begin their cloud services journey by taking inventory of their governance and operational support needs across both traditional and cloud environments. Forming a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) — with a blend of in-house and outside experts — can help facilitate inventory taking by first determining business needs and expected business results. The CCoE then can develop an operating model that consolidates and capitalizes on in-house skills, cloud services partner skills and the modernization capabilities of a cloud environment.

Myth #3: Cloud costs are easy to understand and control

The reality: Cost management always has been a moving target. But the good news is that an experienced service provider can share valuable cross-industry perspectives to help you plan for unforeseen circumstances.

Constant change — new technologies, new pricing structures or macroeconomic disruptions, to name a few — requires the insights of a partner that has a history of helping the companies that run the global economy. By engaging with such a partner, companies can benefit from wisdom and foresight that may be outside of their specialized operations. Finally, a services partner should believe in shared value, and therefore have some skin in the customer’s game so they can succeed together.

To successfully navigate your cloud journey, it is important to adopt a cloud strategy that considers the unique needs of your business, availability of technology, and capabilities of your people and partners. Select a services partner that can augment your expertise across public clouds and existing environments. And be sure to regularly adjust your cloud strategy for ongoing changes in business, technology and skills.

When it comes to the hard-nosed reality of how to protect and grow your business in a cloud environment, there’s no substitute for perspective and partnership.