In part 1 of our article, we revealed only 20 per cent of organisations have achieved ‘level 3’ cloud capability, with ‘cloud-enabled status. Most organisations have low maturity, with “a lot of room for improvement” in the words of HPE.

These findings show that most enterprises lag behind cloud adoption, from data at the edge to on-prem cloud transformation.

The key to connecting, analysing, protecting, and acting on valuable data is transformation across domains that achieve business goals. These domains could be DevOps, security, apps or operations, depending on your business strategy.

Eight domains critical to business transformation

There are eight core domains for enabling an enterprise cloud model:

  • Security: Security has to engulf your entire cloud-to-edge estate, from authentication and identity access control to networking and storage. Sensitive data is highly vulnerable, so it is imperative corporate resources are protected.
  • Data: Data has to be made available at any time. It can live locally, at the edge for immediate access or in the cloud. You also need to integrate, process, and prepare data for analytics on the cloud.
  • Applications: Your application strategy has to support your business goals, locking in productivity, availability and value. Formulate options and pick apps that align with your organisational goals. Build a high-quality inventory.
  • Innovation: Your organisation needs to adopt new technologies rapidly, with faster approval processes and testing procedures. You need to adapt to market demands fast and be ready for change.
  • Operations: One operation model from cloud-to-edge is the way forward for most enterprises, helping to simplify operations and unlock agility. Your operating model will define how you want to operate technology in the cloud.
  • People: From executives to IT staff, the people in your enterprise are critical to your or transformation’s success. The People domain is universally the most challenging to progress because it requires significant time and investment.
  • DevOps: The most widely transformed domain, DevOps is a low hanging fruit for most enterprises because cloud-to-edge solutions already exist. Accelerating development cycles unlocks agility and frees resources.
  • Strategy and governance: Transformation will fail without proper strategy and governance. Qualified people need to make strategic decisions. You must understand the direction you are taking and why.

As enterprises collect more data, the need for data discovery, data preparation and analytics tools will only increase.

However, transformation is ultimately all about people. Hence, businesses need a strategy for talent and leadership with investment in processes that let people do their job. This change comes slowly and develops over time, but it instils a culture of transformation and innovation from the top down to drive true change.