Organisations might be drawn to cloud by the lure of gaining new information and insights from the data they hold. Perhaps they will learn how to retain customers more successfully, or get a better understanding of profit centres – or cost centres. The twin powers of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML), deployed in the cloud can work wonders. But they need their ‘food’, the raw data they work with, to be in tip top condition, and for many organisations preparing that food requires time, effort, and attention to detail. 

Data strategies and clear priorities 

There is no doubt that AI and ML can provide information that organisations can’t come by in any other way. Data-crunching can, if done well, help organisations boost productivity and profits. But optimal success doesn’t come overnight. As Yann Lepant, MD for Accenture Technology in the UK tells Cloud Pro: “It’s easy to get tempted by the extensive set of cloud based new data and AI technologies as it’s an exciting new playground to venture on. However, it’s also a place where it’s easy to consume wastefully and get lost in delivery.”

A key factor in avoiding the pitfalls is to have clear priorities and a solid data strategy. Lepant tells Cloud Pro that having these will mean “each initiative is done with purpose and outcome, contributing to a journey of maturation through the cloud”.

Ingrid Verschuren, head of data strategy at Dow Jones, whose global news database Factiva grows by a million articles every day, from approximately 33,000 sources, tells Cloud Pro: “It doesn’t matter how good the technology is if the data feeding it is poor quality. The first and most important step to get the most out of your data is to ensure you are using the right data – and that it is structured in a way that will answer the questions you want to ask.”  

So what do clear priorities look like? Paul Clough, professor of search and analytics at the University of Sheffield tells Cloud Pro: “Identifying the use cases is critical and needs to be based on issues and problems identified in the business by business stakeholders, rather than by data scientists or the IT department.” This approach keeps the priorities very practically focused, he says. 

Cleaning and refining

Another pair of related tasks that may need to be undertaken before AI and ML can work their magic are cleaning up old data and refining what new data is collected.

Part of the cleaning task will involve bringing data out of silos. This can be tricky, but worth the effort and organisations undertaking the task can take some comfort from the fact that they’re not alone. Often, data silos are a result of historical practice and how things have grown organically over time, and it takes a concerted effort to undo in a relatively short time what’s built up over a much longer period. But as Lepant points out, there are really no short-cuts. “From getting a 360 degree view of the customer to end-to-end supply chain management, via fraud prevention and intelligent forecasting, the list of business outcomes enabled by the removal of data silos is endless,” he says.

Cleaning data is another task that can take time, but the effort is definitely worth it in the longer term. Verschuren provides some useful advice to help keep the cleaning task focussed, telling Cloud Pro: “Before you start cleaning your data, you need to determine how that data will be used and what insights you need to generate. Ask yourself, what does perfect look like? From there, you need to define the data fields that will be part of your data set, and the input for each of those fields.” Effectively, work backwards from the outcomes you want to get, and determine what data you need to get them. 

And finally, along come analytics and insights

With clean data, a clear data strategy in place, and perhaps some new data collection streams in place too, an organisation is finally in a position to start using AI and ML to gain those valuable insights it craves.

But that’s not quite the end of the story. To continue to gain insights over time, data should take its place, unsiloed, front and centre. Or, as Lepant tells Cloud Pro when sharing key advice, organisations should “implement a programme to update the ways of working, culture and data literacy to help the business become more data driven and self-served”.

Organisations might be drawn to cloud by the lure of gaining new information and insights from the data they hold. Perhaps they will learn how to retain customers more successfully, or get a better understanding of profit centres – or cost centres. The twin powers of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI and ML), deployed in the cloud can work wonders. But they need their ‘food’, the raw data they work with, to be in tip top condition, and for many organisations preparing that food requires time, effort, and attention to detail. 

Data strategies and clear priorities 

There is no doubt that AI and ML can provide information that organisations can’t come by in any other way. Data-crunching can, if done well, help organisations boost productivity and profits. But optimal success doesn’t come overnight. As Yann Lepant, MD for Accenture Technology in the UK tells Cloud Pro: “It’s easy to get tempted by the extensive set of cloud based new data and AI technologies as it’s an exciting new playground to venture on. However, it’s also a place where it’s easy to consume wastefully and get lost in delivery.”

A key factor in avoiding the pitfalls is to have clear priorities and a solid data strategy. Lepant tells Cloud Pro that having these will mean “each initiative is done with purpose and outcome, contributing to a journey of maturation through the cloud”.

Ingrid Verschuren, head of data strategy at Dow Jones, whose global news database Factiva grows by a million articles every day, from approximately 33,000 sources, tells Cloud Pro: “It doesn’t matter how good the technology is if the data feeding it is poor quality. The first and most important step to get the most out of your data is to ensure you are using the right data – and that it is structured in a way that will answer the questions you want to ask.”  

So what do clear priorities look like? Paul Clough, professor of search and analytics at the University of Sheffield tells Cloud Pro: “Identifying the use cases is critical and needs to be based on issues and problems identified in the business by business stakeholders, rather than by data scientists or the IT department.” This approach keeps the priorities very practically focused, he says. 

Cleaning and refining

Another pair of related tasks that may need to be undertaken before AI and ML can work their magic are cleaning up old data and refining what new data is collected.

Part of the cleaning task will involve bringing data out of silos. This can be tricky, but worth the effort and organisations undertaking the task can take some comfort from the fact that they’re not alone. Often, data silos are a result of historical practice and how things have grown organically over time, and it takes a concerted effort to undo in a relatively short time what’s built up over a much longer period. But as Lepant points out, there are really no short-cuts. “From getting a 360 degree view of the customer to end-to-end supply chain management, via fraud prevention and intelligent forecasting, the list of business outcomes enabled by the removal of data silos is endless,” he says.

Cleaning data is another task that can take time, but the effort is definitely worth it in the longer term. Verschuren provides some useful advice to help keep the cleaning task focussed, telling Cloud Pro: “Before you start cleaning your data, you need to determine how that data will be used and what insights you need to generate. Ask yourself, what does perfect look like? From there, you need to define the data fields that will be part of your data set, and the input for each of those fields.” Effectively, work backwards from the outcomes you want to get, and determine what data you need to get them. 

And finally, along come analytics and insights

With clean data, a clear data strategy in place, and perhaps some new data collection streams in place too, an organisation is finally in a position to start using AI and ML to gain those valuable insights it craves.

But that’s not quite the end of the story. To continue to gain insights over time, data should take its place, unsiloed, front and centre. Or, as Lepant tells Cloud Pro when sharing key advice, organisations should “implement a programme to update the ways of working, culture and data literacy to help the business become more data driven and self-served”.

The world’s fossil fuel stocks are depleting, and the cost of using them is rising. Meanwhile countries and corporations alike are making commitments to achieve zero carbon status, and individuals are increasingly aware of – and seeking to reduce – their personal environmental footprint. One way tech firms can do their bit to help the steady march to zero carbon is to use what’s known as green cloud. 

The complexities of green cloud

As the name would suggest, green cloud is about being low-carbon, but there are a lot of components in the mix beyond just the power that is used to keep facilities like data centres going. It’s also about how the infrastructure used in cloud facilities is produced and sourced. Some building materials are produced in more environmentally damaging ways, while others are more environmentally damaging to maintain and dispose of at a later date – the whole lifecycle matters. The same lifecycle issues exist for the technology components used to provide cloud services.

Even when we look at energy usage the picture is complex. Renewables are key as an energy source, but they are not the only factor; how energy is distributed around a data centre and energy efficiency are also important considerations. 

All of this means that understanding how green a green cloud provider is can be complex. Subhankar Pal, assistant vice president of technology and innovation at Capgemini company Altran, tells Cloud Pro: “Firms can discover their green-ness by establishing a way to evaluate green KPIs during tests and in production. Green KPIs will be derived from metrics like energy efficiency, cooling efficiency, computing infrastructure performance, thermal and air management metrics.”

Prioritising sustainability matters

Consumers are increasingly adopting sustainability models in their everyday life, and are often prepared to pay more for items that meet environmental credentials. The principles that lead people to look for green energy providers, reduced and recyclable packing in purchased goods, and ethically sourced clothing are the same principles that drive them away from companies that lack green credentials. Firms that add green cloud into their mix stand to gain in reputation, regardless of whether their clients are consumers or other businesses.

As Emma Roscow, Intelligent cloud infrastructure lead for Accenture UKI explains: “Business strategy is increasingly focused on sustainability, with many companies making commitments to reduce their carbon footprint. In fact, 99% of CEOs from large companies now agree that sustainability issues are important to the future success of their businesses.” 

It’s not just about good PR, though – the real environmental gains matter too. Roscow adds: “Accenture recently found that public cloud migrations could reduce global carbon emissions by 59 million tons of CO2 per year, the equivalent to taking 22 million cars off the road.” 

Lead the way and keep a clear head

Given the depletion of fossil fuels and push towards renewables, the move to green cloud is ultimately inevitable. For Pal, the time is right to make the move. “The reason to do this now is because some firms are already experiencing higher cost pressures, and they could be more cost implications in the long run. There could be stricter government regulations, penalties, and higher operational costs for managing non-green data centres,” he says.

But the move should be made with a clear head. Nick Mcquire, vice president, enterprise research at CCS Insight tells Cloud Pro: “We are seeing the cloud providers posturing over ‘my cloud is cleaner than your cloud’ as they commit on the one hand, to massive infrastructure build-outs to sustain demand and differentiate their platforms, and the ability for this infrastructure to be friendly on the planet on the other.” He advises, “customers should push their cloud providers hard on providing energy data around where they place their cloud workloads and for innovation in areas that can cut their energy emissions.”

Roscow highlights some additional factors to be taken into account including, within any firm, “the current hardware’s lifecycle, approach to application development, their sustainable business models and processes, and how they use the cloud to create circular operations”.

There is no easy, off the shelf, method of deciding when and how to make the move to green cloud. Each firm will need to do its own research on both cloud services and its wider use of IT – and that research might be much more in-depth than you think. Roscow puts this plainly – if surprisingly – when she reveals that “Accenture Labs’ research found that even the choice of coding language can impact energy consumption by as much as fifty times, depending on the programming technique”. 

Despite these twists and turns, there is no doubt the move to green cloud is coming for tech firms as for all others. Making the move sooner rather than later might be better financially and reputationally – as well as for the planet.

An organisation might start its venture into cloud in one particular area of its work. Perhaps there is a cloud platform offering support for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning or an Internet of Things (IoT) implementation that is useful for new product or service development, or for streamlining work with an existing product or service. 

Once cloud is established as beneficial in the area it has initially been brought in to help with, it often makes sense to see how it can be used elsewhere in the business. There might be other client facing areas of the business that can benefit, such as employing cloud based AI chatbots for end user engagement, or perhaps there are back-office areas where cloud might be useful such as accounting and payroll services, with AI features that can assist with and speed up monthly close.

A business-led approach

What’s important as use of cloud grows is to continuously view its implementation as business led, and not IT led. In the boardroom the Chief Data Officer role becomes central as they look for points where the agility of cloud can deliver benefits right across the business, while the Chief Finance Officer role might change fundamentally from constantly weighing up capital expenditure to focusing more on operational expenditure. Making those moves can ensure cloud is embedded in the business, but the question then becomes, how much cloud is enough, and how do you keep cloud provision in tune with an organisation’s needs?

Analysing how well cloud usage fits with current and potential future business needs might seem like a difficult thing to do. Getting it right will likely involve a mix of time-specific work around broad business planning and ongoing activity. 

In the former area, if the business is planning a new rollout and requires specific effort such as test and dev, research or fabrication, specific additional cloud resources might be required. In addition, Ramanan Ramakrishna, Cloud CoE Lead and member of the Global Cloud Leadership team at Capgemini, suggests organisations should take a look at cloud providers. He says that “on a quarterly to half yearly basis [companies] should look at the evolution of the PaaS and SaaS offerings from the leading providers and consider them for their cloud strategy,”, just to make sure they are taking best advantage of what’s on offer. 

Rob Greenwood, technical director at Cloud and DevOps consultancy, Steamhaus, tells Cloud Pro that outside of scheduled evaluations, those responsible for cloud within an organisation, right up to the Chief Technical Officer, should keep their ears to the ground in “an on-going process, constantly being aware of new releases and announcements from your cloud provider of choice and evaluating if and how these would supplement your current usage”.

Signs that you are under-provisioned

Amid all this checking on what’s out there and on what your own needs are, it is important to look a little deeper to make sure provision across the board within your organisation is adequate. Ramakrishna points out a few really useful warning signs that an organisation could be under provisioned. “Organisations where capital expenditure on infrastructure is rising year-on-year should analyse whether their cloud adoption is conservative,” he says, suggesting that “close attention should be given to ascertain whether the on-premise infrastructure is designed for handling peak volumes instead of a more optimal strategy of sizing for average volumes  and bursting into the cloud for handling peaks”.

“Another tell-tale sign is if small pockets of cloud purchases are being made from individuals within the business directly,” he says. “This might suggest a lack of coherent cloud strategy and hence cloud not being used in an optimal enterprise manner.”

Under provisioning cloud requirements in this way can have a negative impact on business growth, and here, again, the Chief Finance Officer and Chief Data Officer should work together to spot these tell-tale signs and leverage cloud appropriately to mitigate them. 

Mix your approaches for best results

Ensuring the business has enough cloud, distributed across the right parts of the organisation, is crucial to present agility and future growth. The strategy required to achieve this is mixed, and blends a range of approaches. 

There will be some forward-looking strategising to meet the ambitions of the business. There will be constant scanning of cloud provision technologies to identify areas where the business could benefit. These will combine with actively seeking out signs of under-provisioning, and ensuring that key leadership roles, most particularly the Chief Finance Officer and Chief Data Officer have eyes across the business. Together these strategies can ensure that the business not only has enough cloud, but is using that cloud to its best advantage.

​In the current climate it has become incumbent on all of those who can work from home to do so. While some organisations are used to supporting remote working – whether from home or other locations – for many the current situation presents a significant challenge. There is much to consider, and very little time to put measures in place. 

Providing the technological means for remote working is not just about ensuring your people have adequate hardware and software tools. There is much more to it than that. We spoke to a number of organisations where flexible and remote working are already embedded to get their guidance for others who might be embarking on this for the first time, scaling up, or just looking to refine their approach. 

Freedom and boundaries

If the organisation is providing its people with tools such as internet access, computers, and software, there needs to be a measure of understanding around using these for non-work activities. Auth0 is a multinational organisation with offices in six countries and staff working remotely across more than 30 countries. Steven Rees-Pullman, International Vice President, tells IT Pro: “An acceptable use policy will help users and support staff know what is and isn’t ok when using your networks and software. It’s a simple step but clear guidelines will prevent easily avoidable mistakes that put your network at risk.”

A key aspect of getting remote working right is to avoid micromanaging people. You’ll only get the best from people if you trust them. That doesn’t mean giving people a free rein to do whatever they like, of course. There must be boundaries, and these will be set by the nature of your business, collaborative working needs, time-scales, deadlines, and many other parameters.

Still, getting the right balance between freedom and control, and trusting people is crucial. This includes giving freedom around when and where people want to work. Digital marketing consultancy Croud employs more than 200 permanent staff across three countries. Director of Operations, Katherine Sale tells IT Pro: “Some people are most productive at home where there are no office distractions, whereas for others they need to be around people where they can share ideas and get immediate feedback. The more each of us as individuals can become self-aware of our working habits and the more organisations can be flexible and accommodating towards this, businesses are going to be more productive and efficient.”

Software and security

For those being pushed towards remote working for the first time at the moment, there is some good news about the selection of software. With so many strong collaboration tools available off the shelf, there may well be applications that fit your requirements ready and waiting for you. And they are as appropriate for small organisations of a few people as they are for large multinationals.

Sale tells IT Pro: “Keep it simple. There is no need for jazzy, expensive technology. We use Google Drive, which is a really accessible tool for lots of businesses, no matter what size they are. Using Google Drive means we all have access to relevant work and documents anywhere anytime.”

Maintaining adequate levels of system security remains vital regardless of where people are working. Auth0’s Rees-Pullman tells IT Pro: “When you ‘go remote’, your firewall effectively disappears, and you need to secure your remote employees as well as the third party software they use every day.” Getting adequate systems in place is crucial, and in addition Rees-Pullman also advocates having a backup plan in case something goes wrong. 

Pulling it all together

MediaCom is a planning and buying agency with more than 1000 staff, and is very experienced with supporting remote working. There is sage advice from Elaine Bremner, Chief HR and Talent Officer, when she told IT Pro, “It’s important to make sure you have a way to measure output, and this must be done through easy to use, real-time tech.” She is clear that organisations should measure “output, not presenteeism”, and that what’s needed is “A list of tasks with agreed deliverables and deadlines” – much as is the requirement when working in an office, in fact.

Organisations that get remote working right in the short term may find it extends naturally into the longer term, to the benefit of both organisation and staff alike. Steven Rees-Pullman told IT Pro “We believe work is something you do, not a place you go. So while we can absolutely quantify the benefits of remote working in terms of hours saved commuting or dollars in childcare, there’s also the intangible benefit of making work part of life, not a separate thing. Our employees have the freedom to do work on their own terms in a way that allows them to be most productive.” 

Amen to that.

The ability to work in any location that’s appropriate, from the office base to client premises to your own home, cafés, the beach and any other place that feels like the right place, has always been possible. But advances in technology make it easier to do more from a wider range of locations: If you’ve got a laptop and an internet connection, you’re all set.

This is a kind of mantra, but how do organisations really manage flexible working, what role does technology play, and what’s the mix between financial gains and supporting the wellbeing of the workforce? Cloud Pro asked a range of organisations these questions, and came up with some very compelling answers. 

Size is not a factor

While flexible working is sometimes seen as a luxury afforded only to those working in large companies that can afford to support it, the truth is businesses of all sizes can do it successfully. Indeed, Cloud Pro spoke to large and small organisations about their use of flexible working, and their size was not a factor in their choice.

Vestd, a regulated share scheme & equity management platform for SMBs employs just 14 full time staff. It doesn’t have a fixed office, instead the entire team works remotely, with occasional meetups in co-working hubs in London or Brighton. At the other end of the spectrum, Poly (formerly Plantronics/Polycom), employs around 7,500 staff across the globe. Paul Clark, Senior Vice President and EMEA Managing Director tells Cloud Pro: “At any given time, people may be collaborating from a home office or an office site, based on the task at hand.”

Technology smooths the path

Technology not only makes flexible working easier, it can also deliver entirely new ways of working as a team. For Vestd, technology allows them to operate without an office base, but they still need to get together as a team and for this video calling is vital. Co-founder and CEO Ifty Nasir tells Cloud Pro “Every morning we have a daily video call, with the whole team present.” 

It doesn’t need a great deal of imagination to see how technologies can change the ways in which we collaborate. Paul Clark expanded on how this is achieved at Poly, saying: “Meetings are no longer about talking, but sharing documents, screens and working on ideas as a team. Once on a call, participants want to be able to collaborate, be able to view and annotate the same files together in real-time, rather than waiting for an email to arrive with files to edit locally.”

The bottom line

The financial savings from flexible working can be very significant, too, and benefit both clients and the business itself. Edinburgh-based Prospect Community Housing manages around 1,000 homes and has 33 staff (a mix of full and part time). Director Brendan Fowler tells Cloud Pro that since going live with a bespoke housing management solution that caters for flexible working, staff costs are down £30,000 a year and more staff can spend more time in the community with tenants.

Vestd’s Nasir adds: “In a business like Vestd’s, an office would commonly be the largest cost after salaries.

“[Remote working] means that our fees can be dropped to a more competitive level. Companies that don’t work remotely may soon struggle to compete against those that do.”

Still, at a time when there is a growing feeling that we should be moving away from a five day working week towards four days a week, and there’s increased support for flexible hours across a whole range of sectors, the benefits of flexible working are for many organisations about more than headline financial savings.

Wellbeing matters

Personal wellbeing is increasingly recognised as being both good for the individual and good for businesses. Paul Clark from Poly says: “Work shouldn’t stop if you are away from your desk or outside the office building. This eventually allows for a better work-life balance and the much-needed time to relax anyone would take to trade off driving during rush hour or sitting on a train.”

Ifty Nasir puts it succinctly: “Avoiding the drudgery of a daily commute is very good for the soul, not to mention the back pocket.” He adds that employees save around £6,000 a year on average as a result – without even including any potential childcare costs.

Planning and buying agency MediaCom finds productivity and wellbeing benefits go hand in hand. Elaine Bremner, Chief HR and Talent Officer explains: “The key reason we offer our employees flexibility is to give them a working experience that allows them to also focus on travel, family and health and passions outside of work. This is important in creating an inclusive working culture and by giving people the ability to have ownership over their hours it increases their productivity when they are in work. By making your workforce as comfortable as possible in their work, you get the best results out of them.”

With increasing pressures on public transport systems, a growing awareness of the need to reduce car use, and an ever rising understanding of the health and wellbeing benefits of flexible working, in a way it’s surprising that there are any organisations that are not using technology to support it. Certainly those that have taken the plunge seem to find multiple benefits.

Many smaller organisations resist moving to the cloud because they can find it difficult to envision the benefits it brings. This means they miss out on having access to predictive analytics, arguably one of cloud’s most important features. Predictive analytics can open up whole new areas of knowledge, helping any business gain deeper understanding of its products and services, know more about its markets and users, and plan more effectively for its future.

Opening up the box

Predictive analytics encompasses a very wide range of tools. Bryan Betts, Principal Analyst at Freeform Dynamics explains: “Predictive analytics is a catch-all term for a set of extremely powerful statistical tools. In business they can support planning and decision making – for example, predictive analytics can look for patterns in data and use those to estimate the risk of a customer defaulting, of a machine-tool breaking down, or of traffic patterns on your local network being indicative of a malware or ransomware infestation.”

In short, anything an organisation thinks it would like to know can become available to it. In addition, predictive analytics often opens up new avenues of information that may not even have been considered before. 

A third revolution in analysing data

Organisations have been doing a version of predictive analytics since the days when they totted up sales figures in manual ledgers and worked out what generated the most – and least – income for them, what sold best at different times of the year, what effect changes in pricing had, and so on. 

When spreadsheets came along it became possible to ‘do the maths’ more quickly, to do more complex analyses, and even to automate the production of reports periodically. This was a revolution. It was possible to learn more, though not necessarily easy to mine out the truly useful information from the mountain generated from growing amounts of raw data. 

What’s happened with cloud is another revolution – bringing a myriad more ways to look at data, adding in tools to help organisations see easily what’s important and useful, and producing really complex results with lightning speed. And it’s not just old-fashioned maths that’s used. ‘Fuzzy’ logic, sentiment analysis and more can provide new types of insights. 

All of this means that organisations can gain a far greater depth of insight into their data. As Bryan Betts put it: “This stuff thrives – no, depends – on having loads of data to play with. So as well as trends from data within your own organisation, you can get predictions based on data from the wider community too.”

Why not do it in-house?

Tools that are used by cloud services to analyse data in these multivariate and complex ways could be employed in-house, but there are very strong reasons why cloud is preferable for any organisation. Those same reasons are even more pronounced for smaller organisations, for whom the benefits of cloud are even greater. 

Bill Hammond, founder of Big Data LDN explains: “Small organisations can take advantage of the massive compute power in the cloud to perform batches of analysis which would be almost impossible with the consumer-level hardware many small businesses use day-to-day.” He continues, saying that the upfront cost of buying the amount of compute necessary to match cloud computing power “would be prohibitive for a lot of small businesses, meaning they simply wouldn’t be able to afford the insight predictive analytics would offer them”.

Bryan Betts echoes this, saying the biggest advantage of using cloud to smaller organisations is “you can get access to enterprise-grade technology quickly and easily”.

Speculate to accumulate

There is no getting away from the fact that an organisation will have to spend money to get access to cloud. But if they do so, the benefits of sophisticated, leading edge tools to take an in-depth look at the masses of data they collect, and extract pearls of wisdom from that data can be vital to strategic planning. 

“The advantages of cloud analytics include helping businesses more efficiently process and report data findings, enhance collaboration, and provide decision-makers faster access to business intelligence,” Hammons says. He gives a very practical example: “With small businesses having small budgets to match, every item on the shelves needs to be bought and predictive analytics can help forecast what customers will be looking for based on previous years.”

All this means that buying into cloud based predictive analytics gives smaller businesses a key advantage. As Bill Hammond concludes: “With the capability to predict unknown future events and get vital planning data, small businesses can grow by acting smart. They can punch above their weight, giving them a fighting chance against larger competitors with traditional resources.”

It’s challenging and daunting to launch a new business. Much has to be done in a short space of time including taking care of legal and financial matters that just won’t wait. It’s a stressful time. Technology is one of the key things you need to get right from the outset. But what tech should you prioritise at the startup stage, and how should you go about taking the right approach to it and getting best value? Here’s a primer.

Work out what you need

It’s tempting to sit down with a blank sheet of paper, write down every type of technology you can think of and decide you need all of it from day one to make your business flourish. That might not actually be the case, however.

Your business plan will include strategies for growth; referring back to this document, it will almost certainly become apparent that some things might not be needed right at the outset, or at all.

For example, think about social media. Perhaps at some stage you want to be on every available platform, but at the outset some may be more important than others. It may make more sense to prioritise one or two to focus, define time and costs, factor them into the business plan, and also build in a growth plan.

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Is it better to rent than buy?

According to government research published in late 2018 (PDF), micro-businesses – those with fewer than 10 employees – accounted for 96% of all businesses in the UK last year. If you’re just starting out, it’s likely you will fall into this category and, statistically, are likely to remain there for some time.

If this is the case for your business, you might not have to buy any technology outright at all. A 2018 survey by the Enterprise Research Group (PDF) showed that 41% of micro-businesses used web based accounting, rather than traditional software, while 43% used cloud computing in general. This latter figure is up from 22% in 2015 and just 9% in 2012, so if you decide to take this route, you won’t be alone.

Prioritising three «must have» tech cornerstones

For startups, then, it makes sense to embrace the cloud from the outset. These providers take care of security, as well as data backup and recovery. They also allow you access to the latest features, and provide anywhere, any time access to their services so you can keep on top of the business from your office, from meetings, from client premises, or wherever you happen to be.

You also need to think about your website – something that is crucial to the success of almost every business in our digital age. Consider whether it’s primarily for advertising, or if will you provide services through it: Does it need to process transactions, hold user accounts, integrate with stock systems or otherwise share data with third party applications? If this is the case, how will you abide by regulations such as GDPR? All of this will affect site development and maintenance costs – don’t cut corners that might end up costing money down the line, but also don’t buy more than you really need.

As for social media, it’s a great way to promote your business and build communities, but it can be a drain on time and resources. Think carefully about what you want to achieve, weigh up the opportunity-cost carefully, and decide how each platform would be managed, and by whom. Consider what success looks like, how and when will you evaluate, and whether to drop (or temporarily rest) under-performing platforms.

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Question everything

Hidden inside this discussion are two key watchwords which should really be the guiding principles behind your entire business plan and forward looking strategy, not just technology. The first is to proceed with care: Every penny spent on one thing is a penny you can’t spend on something else, so each penny should be spent wisely.

The second is to question everything. Last week’s great idea might seem iffy after a bit of research and some asking around among trusted critical friends.

For tech in particular, consider what is necessary for success and what’s a «nice to have». In the foundational startup stage, focus on the former – as your business starts to grow, you can always consider adding on the latter.

Moving any aspect of an organisation’s work to the cloud is a serious undertaking. It takes time, it costs money, it needs to be justified to the big bosses and justified to the coalface workers. Workflows, roles and day-to-day activity will change. It can take many months to get everything organised, in place and working well.

The work does not stop once the job is done, either. Managing cloud, like managing any other aspect of IT, is an ongoing commitment. This is about more than just tinkering around – it’s about ensuring your cloud strategy remains fit for purpose and keeps pace with the needs of your business. In order to do that, your strategy will need the occasional makeover.

But how do you know when that time has come?

Strategy? What strategy?

We’re beginning with the assumption that your organisation has a good cloud strategy in the first place, yet this isn’t always the case.

A strong cloud strategy is built on solid principles. It isn’t about the detail of specific business processes or workflows – it’s about why you use cloud, what you expect it to bring to the business, how you evaluate its delivery on those expectations and how you will ensure cloud implementation meets your data governance and security requirements.

If parts of your organisation’s workload are in the cloud and you don’t have a cloud strategy that does these things, then Step 1 is to revise what you have and get a good strategy in place.

Be wary of technology-leads

Assuming there is a sound strategy in place, then «any pragmatic strategy should be able to incorporate additions, modifications or removal of services or business processes,» according to Tony Lock, distinguished analyst at Freeform Dynamics.

One sign that your cloud strategy may be faltering is if it is almost entirely technology driven. A move to the cloud can’t just be dictated by the organisation’s technology, as it will ultimately fail to take key parts of the business into consideration. After months of implementation, you might find you have a superbly well-functioning and well-specified platform, but an enormous hole in your people skills. The longer this goes on, the harder that hole will be to fill.

Leaving the tech too late

Conversely, cloud strategies can flounder if the technology element gets left behind. While a strategy needs to be based on the whole business, including its workflows and business processes, it is, of course, imperative that the technology element is specified, planned and delivered in a timely way.

Jason Stewart-Clark, managing director of Cloud Native Architecture at Accenture, told us that it’s common for an organisation to overly focus on building out its staff skillsets and embed the idea of cloud into the business, but will have failed to build the «technical foundations, perhaps expecting the ‘next big project’ that comes along to build them out». He says «this is normally sub-optimal.»

Worry about replication

A third potential problem that can occur is if an organisation has been too conservative in planning its first workload transition.

«A big mistake is trying to replicate existing datacentre approaches on the cloud,» explains Stewart-Clark. «Not only will this not allow you to realise the business agility and delivery pace benefits of cloud, it will almost always mean you end up spending a lot more money than you need to.»

Review, review, review

It’s important to remember that these signs of a faltering cloud strategy may only surface when an organisation is already deeply committed to delivering its first cloud implementation, or perhaps even when cloud has been in place for a while. The trick is to avoid serious issues like these surfacing. They will take time to put right, cost more money, and could well result in a loss of faith in the cloud concept throughout the organisation.

A strategy review is therefore essential. This isn’t just about regular, scheduled reviews as part of the board’s risk management agenda – something which should happen as a matter of course. This refers to what Accenture’s Stewart-Clark called «regular light-touch reviews», which «take into account changes in each of the domains as well as the interconnects between them».

Your cloud strategy will almost certainly need a makeover if a new business unit is created or acquired, or if one is divested, if there is regulatory or compliance change, and if the organisation considers new business alliances or a move into new territories. It’s also worth keeping an eye on developments in cloud technology and service offers and considering key developments as part of the review process.

‘No action’ is a valid outcome

Importantly, regular, light touch reviews might frequently result in no action being taken at all. If everything is functioning as required and the horizon looks smooth and untroubled, then the appropriate response could well be ‘no action necessary at this time’. This is no different to any other business review that the organisation’s board will undertake as a regular part of its work.

The goal is avoiding serious issues like the three signs of a faltering cloud strategy. Regular review with an eye on the horizon is the way to a smoothly developing cloud strategy rather than coming up against the need for a radical makeover.

Serverless cloud. It sounds impossible, doesn’t it? How can cloud computing be serverless? All that deployed code, all that accumulated data being crunched, examined and interpreted. Surely servers are needed for these tasks?

Well, as it happens, ‘serverless cloud’ is a poor marketing term, as nothing runs in this day and age without some form of compute engine – it’s false advertising if anything. Yet the term defines a particular type of cloud deployment – the ability to use cloud without having to have any servers in your business, and without having to specifically buy or rent any server resource from your cloud provider.

Sure, the provider (AWS, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and the rest) uses servers, but it allocates resources around these as needed, taking server related matters out of the financial relationship it has with clients.

So, why go serverless?

Serverless cloud has some very distinct advantages for organisations working in a cloud environment. Sue Daley, associate director, technology and innovation, techUK, explains that many customers are drawn to low costs and the convenience often associated with serverless.

«Paying for compute resources based upon the amount of transaction performed rather than specifying a virtual machine spec to handle the busiest predicted workloads often equates to compute charging by the microsecond rather than the hour,» explains Daley. «Not having to consider or manage the underlying infrastructure, capacity or operating systems [means organisations can] just write and develop code.»

Ramanan Ramakrishna, Cloud CoE Lead at Capgemini added that those organisations which operate across multiple sites stand to gain the most from serverless.

«[It can be used] as an impetus to promote event-driven computing and a micro-services mindset among developers,» he explains. «This is because the applications being built have to be split into distinct services which can then be deployed and accessed from serverless cloud. This sets the stage for a quicker and easier adoption of agile development principles and CI/CD without falling into traditional waterfall methods.»

Is serverless right for you?

Well, you might already be using it.

«Serverless solutions may already be used by organisations that are unaware of the fact if they are using third-party APIs in their solutions already,» explains Tony Lock, distinguished analyst at Freeform Dynamics. Notwithstanding that, he explains, «it is certainly a good idea to learn a little about the practical implications of serverless computing to help understand when will be the right time to look more deeply or jump in and use».

A major advantage of serverless is the additional pricing options that come with paying for only what you use, rather than being forced to make a projection. This is particularly useful for small businesses and startups that are looking to trim costs and scale at the same time, but all businesses could stand to benefit.

«[Serverless] is a tool that can be used by any organisations regardless of size and scale», explains Daley. «Where it really can add value and impact is in helping small and growing organisations that only need computing power and resources when an event is triggered. For example, those innovative companies that are part of today’s growing gig economy such as car ride share app or a site that allow files or photos to be uploaded which only need to be able to spin up computing resources when a customer request, like a car ride, is requested.»

Things to consider

If serverless is something you feel would be a good fit for your business, there are a few things you need to consider.

Firstly, it’s important to understand the various needs of your business. «Learn how you could exploit serverless, find somewhere simple to start that is likely to have a fast return of visible benefits, and look for partners who have already started down the road and learn from their experiences, good and bad,» urges Lock.

It’s also important to consider your skillsets. Serverless is still a relatively young technology trend and most organisations will lack the technical skills to architect a serverless setup effectively. Of course, that’s doesn’t stop organisations outsourcing to other providers, which may be a short-term solution for most.

Ramanan Ramakrishna suggests «organisations should work towards incorporating serverless cloud into a digital transformation agenda for ‘born in the cloud’ initiatives rather than force-fitting it into traditional applications and associated methodologies».

There is the issue of going all in on serverless needlessly. Daniel Kroening, a professor of Computer Science at Oxford University, argues that the best way to adopt a serverless strategy is to weave it into existing setups.

«It makes sense to see them as a valuable addition to the existing toolkit available to developers and system designers – not as a replacement,» he explains.