How can the Cloud help you achieve a successful digital transformation?
Can we really still question the contribution of the cloud, and in particular the multitude of technological solutions offered by the major public cloud operators?
Yes, certainly for companies that don't want to move outside their national comfort zone and surprise their customers with innovation and speed.
No, for companies of all sizes that do business and have realized that successful digital transformation is a promise of growth and profitability. These companies are already convinced of the benefits of the cloud in guaranteeing a new experience of access to their products and services.
If we follow the inspiration of the great navigators of the 15th century, observing what is happening east and west of its center is always an excellent indicator to ponder when it comes to trends and opportunities.
A global study by MIT, for example, states that: " Digital maturity is synonymous with performance; and companies that have transformed digitally and compared with their industry average produce +9% more revenue per employee, are 26% more profitable, and are better valued (+12%) by financial markets".
But what makes the Cloud such an important asset in achieving this digital transformation?
To understand this simply, and without getting into the obscure and delightfully exotic verbiage of our IT consultants, we need only go back to the simplistic specifications of the Cloud:
- On-demand, self-service resources,
- Scalable,
- Virtualized and abstracted from the physical,
- Programmable and automatable,
- Standardization and industrialization of IT systems,
- Large-scale sharing of common, complex functions,
- Pay-as-you-go billing.
With this premise, it's understood that every IT project serving a company's business activities will be faster, less costly, less operationally risky, and that business applications will be able to reach beyond the "map and the territory", while at the same time being able to cope with success (which is no longer an option) and a growing number of customers.
To understand this, we need only recall the length of projects of yesteryear, which deployed local infrastructures with the ambition of taking applications beyond borders and to the largest possible number of customers. Months, years and budgets were often underestimated.
Integrated Cloud objective: how do you ensure the right approach for success?
Once you've heard it all, all that's left to do is to explore the cloud as a technological tool, and discover all its promising, and no less powerful, features.
It's perhaps at this point that the project is still full of questions: How do I get started? What's the budget? What solution for power, storage and security? And why not innovate with AI and data analytics tools, or new digital experience and user path tools?
Clearly, Cloud providers ' platforms and proposed interfaces are essential, but far from sufficient to build your project independently. Inbound Marketing and Big Data are linked in obscure ways that only a few specialists can explain.
What's more, the Cloud is an ecosystem in its own right, and the need to establish links between the business, lawyers and security officers is going to become imperative very quickly, if the result is to be operational and comply with ever-increasing requirements (RGPD, cybersecurity...).
When a go is given to the project, then difficulties can be revealed very quickly. Unless you're a seasoned expert trained in the many technical and financial screens and possibilities for animating your target schema, the architect will have to wade through the 20,000 to 40,000 service lines offered by public cloud operators. In the event of disorientation, it will be advisable to call on the expertise offered by IT services companies.
This expertise, in addition to correctly architecting Cloud infrastructure components and skillfully implementing them in the Build phase, will then take on its full meaning in the budgetary approach and financial optimizations that the Cloud authorizes through its economic commitment mechanisms.
In this way, the Operational Financier or Finops is a key element in managing the risks that can potentially impact a project if Cloud catalogs are not properly managed. The expert can advise the customer on reserving instances in order to take advantage of savings, and/or provide informed advice on resource allocation mechanisms by Cloud geographical zone. Numerous options and alternatives will quickly emerge as potential cost drivers, either upwards or downwards, but more or less hidden at the time of I.S. construction.
Similarly, the "Build" phase of the project, however rapid and automated it may be in the Cloud, must not overshadow the "Run" phase, and in particular the operational issues involved.
What about application availability? What about data backup? What about analyzing my customer or user paths? The service partner must provide clear answers to these questions, with the aim of securing each day's operation.
In the end, this comprehensive support, both technical and financial, can be a factor in the success of the project, which is itself one of the vectors of success for the company transforming itself with the Cloud.
What type of player is needed to support this transformation?
There are many companies operating in the Cloud sphere today, with specialists in integration, security and development, but it's not always easy to get end-to-end support when the subject is complex or critical.
SCC is one of the players clearly positioning itself in an end-to-end support approach, and with its experience in infrastructure and user environments, has been able to read the Cloud offering and translate it from an operational and pragmatic point of view.
SCC's declared ambition is to provide our customers with a broad spectrum of high-level skills and expertise to support their transformation projects towards the Cloud, the modernization of data centers and the automation of system operations.We also support business projects through technologies such as IoT and artificial intelligence tools.
By way of example, our 30 or so Devops and Automation experts now master more than 40 technological solutions, and in the space of a year have supported more than 60 customers in their datacenter transformation and modernization projects. These projects enable our customers to aggregate several Cloud platforms as well as local infrastructures, while enabling IT teams to efficiently manage and pilot their IT services.
Today, SCC helps its customers transform their IT infrastructures so that they become both a vector of productivity and a source of added value for the company's businesses.
We support our customers through the consulting, design, implementation, operation and optimization of their infrastructures, from the desktop to the datacenter and the cloud. We anticipate the future to meet the most varied needs, be they simple, complex or innovative.
In conclusion
The advent of the cloud will certainly accelerate and boost the performance of companies that have successfully exploited the infrastructure services and innovation solutions it offers. Business IT teams need to rapidly acquire the skills they need to make the best use of Cloud Services, or risk failing to play an active part in the rapid transformation desired by the business. Costs and infrastructures will have to be matched by the cross-skilling of architects and Finops, so skills will have to be shared to successfully pilot this magnificent IT 3.0 tool that is the cloud.
Article translated from French