14 Things You Need to Know About Cloud Advisory Strategy

JULY 01, 2022 04:30 AM

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Moving to the cloud is one of the best business decisions any company can make to reap endless benefits. Migrating to the cloud is one of the numerous business processes facilitated by effective enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. Cloud ERP solutions can automate and digitize all your business processes, including accounting, supply chain management, warehouse management, human resource management, and more.

What is Cloud Advisory?

Cloud Advisory Services is a strategy that helps you identify and solve business problems. It also lets you explore the latest technology trends and their impact on the business. With Oracle Cloud Strategy, your organization can respond to market changes by delivering improved customer service, increased productivity, and lower costs.

The Cloud Advisory Service is one of the first steps in implementing a cloud strategy for any business.
Cloud Advisory, as the name suggests, advises businesses on the available cloud solutions and how they can be utilized within their existing environments.
Cloud Advisory primarily assesses the existing digital environment of the businesses in depth to chart out the perfect cloud strategy for your business.

Each business use case requires a different migration strategy or combination depending on the business objective. Cloud strategy and consulting firms offer cloud advisory services to businesses transitioning to the cloud.

Choosing the right cloud advisory strategy is a big decision, but it does not need to be complicated. Here is a compiled list of 14 key factors to consider when evaluating your options, enabling you to make the best choice for your company.

Better Cloud Migration
Cloud technology is the future, but migrating all your applications to the cloud without any knowledge or experience can be a significant hassle. Minimize hassle by hiring a cloud advisory service partner because they can guide you better when you migrate to the cloud. The cloud migration service experts possess all the knowledge and skills necessary to ensure a hassle-free transition to the cloud.
Understand How the Cloud Can Benefit Your Organization
As mentioned earlier, not every business is cloud-ready. Your cloud migration partner should conduct a cloud readiness assessment to identify situations that may favor or hinder seamless cloud implementation.
Outline the Business Functions and Goals
With employees and migration partners, brainstorm and document objectives to identify the various business functions that can be migrated or modernized within the existing business scope. Cloud migration partners will help you identify the business functions that need to be migrated as soon as possible and the other tasks that will create value through migration.
Equip the Business to be Future-Ready
Future state analysis includes both business and technological aspects of cloud deployment. The authentication, identification, confidentiality, and suitability options are considered in this stage.
Redundancy and Gap Analysis
This analysis involves identifying gaps, priorities, overlaps, shortfalls, and redundancies in proposed cloud solutions to ensure no barriers to the migration plans.
Risk Assessment
Based on experience, an organization can first identify the likely risks. So, a risk-aware cloud strategy helps to validate potential issues and compile the appropriate mitigation strategies.
Determine the Right Cloud Deployment Model
Determine how your cloud will be deployed (Public, Private, or hybrid) within your organization based on your business goals. To get the best value out of the cloud, analyze your computing, networking, and storage requirements.
The Right Type of Cloud Service
Enhance the enterprise's ability to adapt to the cloud model and facilitate a smooth transition to the new workflow; this involves considering cloud computing solutions and evaluating the advantages of cloud technologies over other options.
Cloud Strategy Consulting
Whether it involves any Oracle cloud or another cloud migration strategy, businesses would benefit from having a reliable and effective partner who can architect and implement these cloud applications tailored to their industry.
Outline the Implementation Plan
Gather details of the implementation plan through a viable implementation roadmap and recommendations with activities that evaluate the dependencies, costs, and benefits of different cloud transition projects.
The Right Cloud Computing Model
The three major cloud computing models are utilized to address cloud challenges.

Software as a Service (SaaS),
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Assess Security and Data

Security compliance refers to your organization's capability to protect and control access to sensitive data and audit mechanisms to ensure continued legal compliance.
Data criticality refers to protecting confidential data from being tampered with and ensuring it is always available to your business.

Evaluate Your Cloud Target State
Using qualitative and quantitative assessments, estimate the value benefits of your organization's intended achievement of cloud goals physically and virtually, post-implementation, and measure against your current infrastructure and ROI.
Service Providers Can Simplify Complexity
The cloud was supposed to simplify the world, but businesses migrated to the cloud without adequately evaluating their primary goal. It is challenging to maximize and interact with each of your clouds; the cloud provider handles hardware and software upgrades, saving money and time while ensuring that applications always have access to up-to-date infrastructure.

FAQs

What is Cloud Advisory, and why is it important?
Cloud Advisory Services is a strategic approach that helps organizations identify and solve business problems by leveraging the latest technology trends. It's important because it enables businesses to respond to market changes, enhance customer service, boost productivity, and lower costs through optimized cloud solutions. It also provides guidance when moving applications to the cloud.
What are the key steps involved in a Cloud Advisory engagement?
The key steps generally include a cloud readiness assessment, outlining business functions and goals, future state analysis (considering business and technological aspects), gap analysis, risk assessment, determining the right cloud deployment model (Public, Private, or Hybrid), choosing the right type of cloud service, cloud strategy consulting, outlining the implementation plan with a roadmap, assessing security and data criticality, and evaluating the cloud target state to measure ROI.
What are the different cloud deployment models, and how do I choose the right one for my organization?
The primary cloud deployment models are Public, Private, and Hybrid. The right model depends on your business goals, computing, networking, and storage requirements. A Cloud Advisory service can help analyze these factors to determine your organization's most appropriate deployment model.
What are the main cloud computing models, and how do they solve cloud challenges?
The main cloud computing models are Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). These models offer varying levels of abstraction and control, enabling businesses to select the option that best suits their needs and resources. They address cloud challenges by providing flexible, scalable, cost-effective solutions tailored to diverse IT requirements.

Conclusion

Cloud advisory companies possess the expertise and experience to suggest the correct set of solutions and the intricacies of service providers to their clients adopting cloud models. Contact us to get started!

About SMACT Works

SMACT Works is a technology-focused systems integrator and IT/ERP consulting firm. We deliver end-to-end consulting, managed, and implementation services for Oracle Cloud Applications, IaaS & PaaS, On-Premise PeopleSoft & EBS Applications. Headquartered in Dublin, OH, we have a global presence with North America and Asia offices. We are an Oracle Gold Partner Cloud Standard, ISO 9001, and 27001 certified delivery organization serving customers with Excellence and Integrity.