Run in the Cloud Series- Prologue
Business landscapes are changing, technology landscapes are changing, new business models are being created, and old business models are becoming defunct. While change has always been the name of the game in business, never have we witnessed such a massive shift across business and technology at the same time. This change, while can be a threat to many businesses, can be a great opportunity to others who are ready to make the transition into the new reality, not through a blind leap of faith, but through a measured harnessing of enterprise software that is delivered on the cloud by companies like SAP.
While adopting the cloud as the route to scaling businesses without disruption has been recognized by IT and business leaders alike in large global organizations, there are quite a few unanswered questions in their minds, questions which I typically get in my interactions, which range from “Where do we start?” to “How do we get there?” and everything in between. In the upcoming series of posts titled “Run in the Cloud”, I intend to share my views on some key tenets of cloud transformation journeys which are critical for companies to define, chart, plan and execute upon a transition to the cloud, thereby shortening time to value and making cloud a competitive differentiator in their business.
“As a prelude, I would like to state that a journey to the cloud is not just a change in delivery model of enterprise software; but a means to drive business transformation through simplification.”
To explain this, I would like to use the below graphical analogy on innovation.
Traditionally, innovation can be defined as meeting needs through more effective products, services or technologies. While conventional innovation improves upon existing processes and experiences, it falls short when it comes to new realities, which would require completely new products which can be delivered only through transformational innovation.
Extending this analogy to enterprise software, classic IT enablement of business processes help companies drive efficiencies and compliance, and make them “go-faster”, cloud transformation enables companies to radically re-imagine their business processes, drive simplicity across the value chain and help them “go-beyond”. This makes it imperative that cloud transformation journeys need to be treated differently than classic IT enablement projects in order to have the desired impact.
“Unlike a traditional IT project where change management comes at the time of roll-out, in a cloud transformation journey, change management begins at the very first step of the journey, in defining the “To-be” process.”
This shall be the first tenet that I would like to touch upon in the next post “Designing for simplicity” .
This blogpost originally appeared on LinkedIn: Here