Libor Bešenyi (CTO)

Jana Cilli (CMO)

IT directors perceive the Cloud with displeasure. They see mostly the risks. Opportunities that the Cloud offers are relegated to a secondary role. Is this lax approach to migration to the Cloud justified? Or is it that businesses may miss their opportunity on their way to the digital transformation?

 The IT world is still isolated and the IT is not a partner for business. IT departments of companies have still not taken the steps to open possibilities and allow for the company to succeed in the market. They are still searching and finding the reasons why not to implement the change. Restrictive, conservative approach is given preference against innovative and entrepreneurial approach. In case of deciding on migration to the Cloud, the benefits for IT are lower than the risk and the effort associated with the change. The question is, whether the opportunities that the Cloud offers for the whole company are not worth for the IT to start dealing with the Cloud strategy seriously.

IT directors often have justified reasons for their restrained attitude to the Cloud.

The quality of existing proprietary information systems, particularly in medium-sized businesses, varies from company to company. After years of improving and adjusting the process, the CIO is often disappointed. It turns out that the changes that go hand in hand with implementation of the Cloud and with the digital transformation as such are much more extensive than was expected. This obviously has an impact on the time and financial costs of implementation of these changes. IT managers may also worry about the temporary reduction of the benefits of IT interconnectivity, as well as possible temporary duplication of data - which are certainly objective pitfalls, if gradual migration to the Cloud is selected.

However, IT departments do not want to realize the opportunities that the Cloud brings for business. Nevertheless, this wariness of CIOs deprives the companies of the most important thing that the Cloud brings to business - an opportunity to react to market changes quickly.

We know that we live in an era of changes. The world is faster and the businesses need to react and adapt to market conditions faster. Uber and AirBnB are examples of an entrepreneurial approach changing traditional professions and even entire industries. Responding to these trends is a challenge by itself - when added criteria such as the rate of implementation of the changes, such requirements become difficult to achieve by conventional means of IT departments.

What questions should companies ask if they want to consider migrating to the Cloud and thus seize the opportunities that come with digital transformation?

Strategy: What are the company's business objectives? Do the initiatives and projects of our company support business objectives? Do the components of my `IT Roadmap` support the aforementioned initiatives?

• It will allow me to align IT objectives with the objectives of the organization and make the IT department a trusted partner for business.

Do I build my system architecture based on independent, isolated units, making it possible to reuse them?

• In this way, I can obtain huge benefits of connectivity of all my systems from the Cloud in the future. I will gain flexibility and speed, immediate response from the market, significant benefits for the customer.

Do I have implemented elements of agile project management in parallel with long-term planning of IT strategy?

• By means of agile project management, I can link business objectives of the company with the delivery of IT services built on advanced IT technology allowing use of all the benefits of the Cloud and thus the digital transformation.

Are we open to innovation in our company? How do I ensure a flexible approach? How are new ideas registered and applied in our company?

READ MORE

• Preparing for Digital Transformation
• Software development history (from mainframes to cloud)