Resistance Is Futile, The Cloud Strikes Back

Digital Disruption, Digital Transformation, Cloudified, Born in the cloud, IoT, AI, VR/AR, Hyperscale, Hybrid-cloud, Multi-cloud and so it goes on.  If you want hyped terminologies or acronyms the technology space delivers.

But in reality, what is important is the outcome. What use of new technology brings to a business in terms of top and bottom-line value. Does it enable greater efficiencies, improve customer engagement and service, provide a competitive advantage or simply allow you to achieve things not possible or affordable to you using legacy or traditional form factor technologies.

Too often we get entailed in the jargon from Cloud, IoT, AI, AR, VR, Big Data, 5G, Blockchain, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and so it goes on. The barrier today is not the availability of technology nor in wholesale the cost, but 2 factors both directly linked to one word – 'change'.

Capability and receptiveness to change are key in defining an organization's speed of transformation to take benefit of new tech offerings.

Both factors are pretty obvious when dissected;

Human's resist change for ten reasons according to Harvard Business Review, ranging from risk adversity, uncertainty, perceived effort (extra work), and discomfort. Have we not all been in a position where we deferred a change action due to believing we did not have time for the effort required, we had too much on our plate.  I myself remember years ago being an avid Blackberry'ite with a company-provided shiny new iPhone in the drawer and putting off the migration in the assumption that it's going to take hours and I can't find a right time where I can be offline for half a day while I figure it out. Come a day when a blackberry key breaks (try using with no 'T' key) so forcing me to make the change; less than an hour in and all done and finding myself sold on Apple and all the new toys I have gained. I remember vividly sitting there thinking why didn't do this months ago.

A business's capability to change and adopt new offerings, many powered by the cloud is typically hindered by the Ball & Chain of legacy around their virtual ankle. When faced with discussing cloud transformations with a client I have often posed a simple challenge. Imagine you are all leaving the business today to form a direct competitor from scratch. Your goal is to be as efficient and effective as possible to land grab as much business as you can from the market you know. Go to the whiteboard and map out how you would structure the business, what tools available today you would use with no barriers.  What gets built, using the expertise of the individuals, is nearly always contradictory to where they are today in their existing business.

Why? Because they have been untethered from the legacy 'Ball & Chain' that holds them back and given free rein to make smart new decisions.  In an existing business (Digital Transformation hype alert) it is not easy to switch out and build all from scratch. Any tech stack changes are usually enacted piecemeal, meaning step by step new options have to play well with the existing tech stack.

These decisions of change often are prolonged with internal discussions over the philosophy of such a change, 'but we have always done it this way.

So where did the cloud strike back? We all know the impact of COVID on businesses and individuals, but one of the positives to come from this experience has been the change of awareness and mindset towards the art of the possible.

Imagine how the pandemic would have been without the cloud? In the unexpected and immediate rush to global work from home there was an unexpected spike of enormity for remote computing power. The strongest example being the speed at which video calls became a worldwide norm. almost overnight we switched on Zoom, MS Teams, and Google Hangouts en masse ad it worked. Cloud's elasticity welcomed the volume without issue. Businesses bypassed traditional gain processes for a short pain fix. Decisions were made and systems spun up quickly to minimize the impact on businesses and customers. Zoom for example reported daily usage leaping from 10 million users to over 200 million.

In a time pre-cloud, where would we have been? We can have expected a global shortage of video conference equipment, vendors citing 6 months queues to install more hardware, and businesses and employees hindered far more massively than we were.

We have just experienced the biggest proof point of how people can change and adapt quickly and how technology can be just as flexible to support this. We are now at a point of development where the cloud has already won. I remember a time where cloud's naysayers were in volume, citing insecurity, lack of control, risk, and every other excuse for why the cloud empire would fail. There are still those that resist through habit, lack of understanding, or emotion, but resisting is giving an advantage to your competitors. We have already witnessed a mass disruption of industries prior to Covid,  by born in the cloud organizations who have taken full advantage of the available new tech for themselves their customers (Amazon, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb, and the list goes on). When the pandemic hit the new era of organizations flipped to remote working seamlessly due to the structure of their tech stack.

We are now witnessing innovation accelerating, with cloud computes power and affordability driving new compounding advances that will empower us even further from Artificial Intelligence (AI) through 5G empowering us to do more, anywhere from any device.

The business has the opportunity to secure a successful platform for their future, by taking the proof point of the 2020/21 experience and unpacking the excuse bag of 'why nots' and refilling it with the excitement of what can be achieved, often from new vendor brands and new ways to approach old problems.

Author

Ian Moyse, Chief Revenue Officer OneUp Sales

Ian Moyse is a recognised industry Cloud Thought Leader and Influencer, rated twice #1 cloud influencer by Onalytica and winner of a variety of industry awards. Ian is sought after as a speaker, panellist, podcast guest and blogger used by many global brands such as IBM, SAP, Oracle, Huawei and Commvault.