Journey to the Cloud

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2020 was a challenging year not only for individuals but also for businesses. COVID-19 has brought to light the fragility of our economic infrastructure. Many businesses have been forced to shut down, and many others are living on numbered days. This pandemic, I believe, has hit us at one of the worst possible times it could have. It has hit us during a transition period where we are moving from reliance on hardware to reliance on software. We are in a position where we cannot go back to the old ways of doing business and we haven’t fully adapted to the future of business technology. 2011-2020 was the decade of this transition. And unfortunately for us, it ended badly.

In the last decade, businesses have ramped up efforts to improve sustainability, elasticity and efficiency with the employment of new technologies in their current workflows. In this era of digital transformation, the most important adoption is that of cloud technology. According to an executive summary published by Accenture, 87% of business executives surveyed consider cloud to be a critical component to achieve future business sustainability goals. The same summary also states that more than 90% of enterprises have already adopted cloud in some form. That’s good, right? Yes.

However

Only 37% of companies say that they have fully achieved their expected outcomes from the cloud (a mere 2% increase from 2018). High adopters (>75% workloads in the cloud) have seen better results than their counterparts. Even so, 52% of high adopters report they have failed to achieve their expected outcomes from the cloud. The existence of elaborate legacy systems and infrastructure, the want of talent and organizational design also affect value realization from the cloud. Low adopters (less than 30% workloads in the cloud) have seen significantly worse results than high adopters.

Cloud migration is not without its own problems. And these barriers hit some companies harder than they hit others. In addition to the problems companies commonly face during cloud migration, 25% of companies face unique and unexpected challenges which further sets them back.

“Security and compliance risk” remains the most common concern for companies followed by the “legacy sprawl” and “misalignment of IT and business processes”. While security and compliance risk is a common concern at all three levels of cloud adoption, it is the primary concern of companies at moderate and high levels. Companies at each level report facing different sets of challenges. Low adopters report lack of skilled cloud professionals as their primary barrier to cloud.

What’s in it for me?

The good news for us is that this is a wonderful opportunity to make a successful career in cloud computing. The Future of Jobs Report 2020 lists cloud computing as the most industry relevant skill to learn in the near future. Cloud computing now offers a near-perfect gateway to the future of software engineering and that too, at the comfort of our homes. We can leverage this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (perhaps) to not only develop ourselves personally and professionally but also build something for tomorrow. We can be the wings of the world as it begins its journey to the cloud.

References:
1. https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-139/Accenture-Cloud-Outcomes-Exec-Summary.pdf
2. https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-future-of-jobs-report-2020

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