The cloud has become inevitable for enterprises in today’s digital-first world. Cloud adoption progressed steadily over the last decade. Enterprises adopted the the cloud for scalability, cost advantages, and other benefits. The pandemic gave cloud migrations a turbo boost, and the cloud became the dominant infrastructure. With stay-at-home orders kicking in, enterprises scrambled to migrate to the cloud overnight to enable work from home. Today, work-from-home has morphed into hybrid work, where employees commute to their offices rarely. Businesses continue to migrate applications to the cloud, not just to enable access anywhere but also for resiliency. The increasing preference of customers and employees for digital makes the cloud unavoidable. Customers would go elsewhere if they do not have seamless digital.

But the digital transformation to a cloud-first ecosystem is not a walk on the part of most enterprises. CIOs would do well to consider the following best practices to get the change right and ensure continued business success.

1. Go beyond “Lift and Shift.”

Many enterprises adopt a “lift and shift” approach to the cloud. They move applications and associated data to the cloud as it is, without redesign, for speedy deployment. Rewriting applications for the cloud is cost and time intensive. For complex applications, the task extends to years. The time delay makes it unviable, especially in today’s fast-paced world where customers do not entertain delays.

A successful cloud-first approach requires developing or re-designing applications for the cloud. The cloud-first approach is inevitable to get the full benefits of the cloud. Redesigning applications also enables customer-centricity, another essential ingredient for success. Applications with robust cloud-native features deliver a seamless cloud experience to customers.

Enterprises embracing the cloud-first strategy have no workarounds to adopting cloud-native principles. But enterprises hard-pressed for time or resources could do a ‘lift and shift’ to get their environments over to the cloud in double-quick time. They could then optimise for the cloud taking their time.

2. Co-opt cloud-native principles to cloud applications

Enterprises seeking a cloud-first ecosystem must co-opt cloud-native features in their applications. Key features and functionalities for developing robust cloud applications include:

• Agile development process. DevOps unshackles the development team from a siloed approach. The integrated development and operations teams speed up time-to-market.
• Microservice architecture facilitates rapid delivery and independent deployment of large, complex applications. Enterprises evolve their technology stack effortlessly using microservers.
• Chaos testing, or crashing the system, tests the efficacy of recovery. Mean time to failure (MTTF) and mean time to recovery (MTTR) rates improve.
• Resiliency testing determines how the software will perform under stressful conditions. Examples include down nodes in the load balancers, access to shared file systems going down, or other unstable conditions.
• Cloud observability or analysing cloud logs for actionable insights. Getting it right offers a better understanding of issues and factors that cause failure.
• Integrated approach. Many enterprises try to solve problems in silos. They choose different, non-integrated systems for various departments or needs. Such an approach is inefficient and not workable in the cloud. Cloud-first requires integrated databases and data lakes offering a single truth source. 
• Integrated dashboards. APIs connect disparate databases and ensure free information flow. 
• Clear-cut collaboration and communication paths. Employees also perform better with robust communication channels. 75% of employees feel stressed when they cannot collaborate with co-workers to solve a customer issue. 54% of workers believe ineffective technology makes them less productive. Customers also disdain repeating information to multiple representatives to address their concerns. Disjointed communication paths drive away 41% of consumers.

3. Establish a cloud centre of excellence

Many large enterprises develop cloud centres of excellence (CoE) to give focus to their cloud-centric efforts. Some of the tasks handled by such CoEs include:

• Guiding strategic decision-making to maximise value from the cloud. Tech adoption and a committed workforce do not amount to much without sync with the enterprise business strategy.
• Undertaking cost-benefit analysis. The cloud offers good scope for savings. But such savings does not come automatically. Costs for cloud services add up. Enterprises need a clear idea of how much their cloud services cost and seek the most favourable terms to keep costs under control. Easy scale-up and scale-down are crucial advantages of the cloud. But such a facility may not be cost viable if the enterprise selects the wrong provider or package.
• Developing enterprise-level frameworks for cloud operations. Effective CoEs have specific policies for selecting providers and developing cloud architecture.
• Being internal consultants for business-unit and functional teams.
• Assessing the skill sets available with the enterprise. Provision of talent for cloud-based app development, infrastructure support, security, and other critical areas. Explore options such as fresh hiring, outsourcing, or skill upgrading existing employees to fill the gap.
• Assist enterprise users in routine cloud-based functions. Such activities include backup and disaster recovery.

4. Addressing people issues

A cloud-first strategy is tech-centric. The core of a cloud-first environment is building, deploying, and maintaining cloud-based applications. But underestimating the human element is a big mistake.

Transforming an existing IT team to the cloud overnight is impossible. Cloud-native technologies need very different skill sets compared to conventional computing. In today’s age of skill shortage, such skills are hard to come by. Employees would need skill upgrades to support cloud-based applications. The onus is on CIOs to:

• Develop proactive action plans for upskilling, retraining, and hiring to bridge the skill gap.
• Making employees aware of the features-set available in cloud platforms. 
• Securing the employees’ buy-in and commitment. This involves getting employees out of their comfort zone and overcoming resistance to change. Many employees are comfortable with their existing toolsets, even if such tools are inefficient and make them work harder.
• Developing new ways and approaches of work, focusing on information sharing and transparency. 
• Making rank-and-file employees imbibe a cloud-first mindset. Employees need a push to shift their perspective from waterfall thinking to agile thinking.

5. Overhaul the approach to security

One of the advantages of cloud adoption is lesser security hassles. The cloud service provider takes care of security. But enterprises cannot afford to forget about cloud security. They need to rejig their traditional security approaches primed for on-premises installations. CIOs need to:

• Identify the risk of new cloud-based deployments and deploy adequate countermeasures. Cloud security posture management (CSPM) automates identifying and remediating threats. Enterprises may leverage CSPM for risk assessment, incident response, and compliance monitoring.
• Pay particular importance to user authentication and data encryption. Conventional security installations such as firewalls have become obsolete with the cloud. Remote access poses new risks, which makes authentication important. 
• Evaluate service providers on security considerations, among other factors.
• Keep track of industry trends and follow the top cloud security best practices.

The success of the cloud-first approach depends on a realistic roadmap for cloud migration. Rushing to the cloud, as most organisations have been doing since the pandemic, is not sustainable without a long-term plan. Also, doing everything at once is a recipe for failure. Success depends on an incremental approach. Upgrading one platform at a time and building skill-sets around it ensures seamless development.