Cloud Computing Strategy

Strategic Planning

Before investing the money for cloud computing and developing cloud applications, the user must necessarily consider the needs, strategically plan them for business needs.

Users must consider the following issues.

• Budget requirement
• Privacy and data security
• Need for training
• Data export requirement
• Data backup requirement
• Client accessing facility

Now, in order to meet all these requirements and to make fruitful use of them, it must form a mindset with strategies. So let's talk about the different cloud planning phases that an organization has to follow before getting their hands dirty, by choosing the cloud technology.

The three main phases are:

1. Strategy Phase
2. Planning Phase
3. Deployment Phase

Strategy phase: - In this phase, we discuss the problems that are faced by the customers.

There are two steps to check this phase:-

1. The Value proposition of cloud technology: - It may contain various activities such as IT management simplification, maintaining cost reduction, low-cost outsourcing, high QoS (quality of service) outsourcing, and innovation in the business model.
2. Strategy planning of cloud technology: - In this, based on the analysis of value proposition, the strategies are established, and the documentations of strategy are made according to the problems that customers might face when using cloud technology.

Planning Phase:- In the planning phase, the problem analysis and risk analysis for switching to cloud technology is examined to assure whether the customer is agreed or satisfied in meeting their business  goals or not.

The steps for planning are:

• Development of business architecture.
• Development of IT architecture
• QoS development requirement.
• Development of transformation plan.

Deployment phase: - The deployment stage rotates its plans based on the above two planning phases and includes the following steps:

Step1: Selecting appropriate providers of the cloud: - The selection is based on SLA (service level agreement), which defines the level of service that cloud provider will offer.

Step2: Maintaining the technical service:-The provider must assure the appropriate maintenance of services by offering the best Quality of Service to their users.

Points to be considered before Investing in Cloud

Many IT firms and companies want to remodel their infrastructure & technology; Cloud computing has become profitable for them. It is evident that cloud technology altered the modern scenario of technology, still, it is also a truth that there are certain issues (such as security, fast internet connection, etc.) that shows its limitations. So, the users who will invest their money in cloud technology, they have to look at every aspect thoroughly.

The points are:

• Availability: - As soon as all of your business-critical data is stored in the cloud storage, it becomes essential to check whether or not the data is available, whether the data is secured, or whether there are loopholes that could become the cause of a company's downfall. Therefore, you should stay focused as a user before signing the deal and check this aspect with the service provider.
• Compliance: - Still, it looks that all data gets stored in the cloud storage, but data is located on various servers; these servers are located in various nations of the globe. Although it has an advantage in terms of data accessibility, the user needs to be concerned about the issue of legality; the problem in the sense-users needs to test whether there will be any bias or limitation in storing a specific type of data outside national boundaries.
• Compatibility: - Before investing money in the cloud, the user must check the compatibility of the IT infrastructure of the organization.

While cloud technology provides optimal benefits for users, as vendor users also need to harvest and extract maximum cloud usage. In addition, it has to bear in mind that the organization's employees have to cope with the cloud technology infrastructure.

• Monitoring: When you put the data on cloud storage, the cloud service provider takes the responsibility and control of your data. Due to this reason, monitoring becomes a problem. Since complete monitoring of data is possible, so users should make assure that appropriate monitoring of data is allowed by the providers based on user requirements.

Strategy Life Cycle

The cloud technology implementation approach includes the following:

• Planning for utilizing cloud technology.
• Capabilities of an enterprise.
• Target architecture required
• Gap analysis and transition planning
• Planning to implement cloud
• Governance and significance of SOA (service-oriented architecture).