Break through business as usual with cloud

As cloud grows in maturity, its business value remains elusive and untapped for many. What’s going on here?

To realize the full value of cloud, business and IT leaders need to break away from measuring cloud success exclusively through traditional, technology-oriented key performance indicators. I have witnessed this first-hand with dozens of NTT DATA clients across industries and around the globe. When IT and business leadership collaborate and recognize cloud’s ability to create business advantages, great (and measurable) things naturally follow for the business.

It sounds like a no-brainer. So, why have many organizations been unable to break through and use cloud to create business value? Let’s examine some lessons learned from leaders that have emerged on the other side to experience growth, improved digital experiences and more meaningful customer engagements.

• PRESS PLAY → Also listen to our podcast, Cloud Breakthrough with NTT DATA’s Charlie Li

1. Refocus your perspective on the cloud

Viewing cloud computing merely as an infrastructure solution – a means to store data or host applications – limits its potential to have an impact on your organization. Instead, you should broaden your perspective to appreciate the transformative value of cloud, which supports business growth and gives you a competitive advantage:

• The cloud is a platform for innovation, making it possible to increase and improve customer engagement by using cloud-based analytics and AI tools to gain deeper insights into customer behavior.
• Component-based accelerators, blueprints and reusable code for industry use cases or specific business problems would not be possible without cloud. Cloud marketplaces are now a common source of the applications and services that organizations need to achieve business success faster.
• By recognizing cloud-native modernization as a strategic tool for value creation and a critical enabler of digital transformation, you can harness the cloud’s full potential.

2. Think business growth: new revenue streams and more

The only way to grow your organization, gain a competitive advantage and differentiate yourself in the market is through the alignment of your business and IT goals.

This alignment creates opportunities for you to explore new opportunities for revenue generation and access new revenue streams. For instance, IT can support business initiatives by deploying scalable, secure ecommerce applications that handle a higher volume of transactions without compromising performance. This means you can access broader markets and customer bases to increase sales.

Instead of zooming in on the number of workloads or avoided outages, take a step back and consider your business strategy. How can the cloud improve your digital engagement and your time to market? How can it make you stand out in your industry through access to innovation and by enabling superb customer experience (CX)?

Similarly, don’t get caught in the trap of looking at cloud value only through the lens of SLAs, which are important for ensuring cost-control, reliability and availability of cloud services but don’t capture the full spectrum of business-led benefits that cloud computing can offer.

When IT understands what the business needs, they can prioritize those needs and swiftly develop and deploy cloud-based applications that are critical to your organization’s operations and growth strategy. Faster time to market is a significant competitive advantage.

3. Adopt a consumer mindset to create enterprise value with cloud

We expect our phones, our banks and our cars to “just work” – to be there when we need them and deliver exceptional CX. You should also demand that from your cloud platform and applications.

Consider the following: as consumers, we value that our service providers shield us from the effort it takes to make our phones ring, our bank cards work and our cars start. We expect these things to happen reliably, day in and day out. Our most positive customer experiences involve a personalized approach, high availability and security we trust and depend on. Cloud should be held to the same standards.   

This is a liberating breakthrough that leads to more thoughtful approaches to customer, prospect and employee engagements; new personalized or industrialized applications; or the prioritization of operational excellence to ensure high availability of services. Think consumer. Think cloud success. 

4. Achieve your business goals with agile, cloud-native modernization practices

The excitement around cloud-native architecture and applications isn’t just about the technologies: it’s also about business growth, profitability and higher customer satisfaction. Going cloud-native is a game changer when it comes to strengthening your business advantages. At the same time, IT leaders benefit greatly from the impact of cloud on project delivery, predictive analytics and security. Increased agility and reusability are advantages for both sets of leaders.

One of the more practical benefits of cloud-native environments is their ability to improve the monitoring and management of systems and consolidate data and operational insights into a single dashboard. This creates a centralized, real-time view of your operations, making it easier to identify and address issues before they affect performance. Instantly and with precision, you can isolate issues down to the server or code level from anywhere in the world.

A cloud-native platform-delivery approach provides organizations with the “digital fabric” they need to deliver automation, integration, security and visibility. This is achieved by integrating and managing these technologies through a unified platform that spans applications, networks, clouds and more. It translates into faster delivery and, in turn, a competitive advantage.

It is also worth noting that all the generative AI (GenAI) projects being explored today depend on the scalability, security and computational power of cloud. Any GenAI project designed to create a business advantage needs a well-understood and secure cloud strategy, be it on- or off-premises.

5. Define a cyber resilience strategy to protect your brand

A comprehensive approach to cloud security not only focuses on preventing cyberattacks but also allows your organization to keep operating effectively in the event of a security breach.

A well-tuned strategy includes assessing your cybersecurity vulnerabilities, developing a risk management plan to prioritize risks, and outlining approaches to mitigate and respond to incidents. It should identify systems and processes to maintain essential functions and services during and after a cyberthreat – for example, by using redundant systems and cloud backups.

All this is necessary, in many cases, to keep your organization compliant with government, industry and corporate regulations. The value of this strategy is not just that it safeguards your information, but also – and equally important – it protects the brand value you have worked so hard to build. One incident can affect your brand equity. It’s an area that needs considerable focus, as it relates to business value.

Take the next step

Forward-thinking leaders that have linked cloud value to business advantages are seeing a measurable impact on their speed of delivery, the quality of their digital engagements and the volume of innovative products and services they can now provide. They measure cloud value through business value. It’s this shift in thinking that has advanced them along their business and cloud transformation journey.

NTT DATA’s platform-driven approach uses advanced cloud-native features to help you become more agile and responsive to the needs of your organization. I encourage you to learn more about our cloud solutions. We’ll help you realize your next breakthrough moment in business transformation.