Thinking cloud-first:
How to leverage cloud services to accelerate growth
Future-proof your organization by building cloud resiliency
Nov. 4, 2020 | By: Jen Doyle
Digital transformation ultimately comes down to leveraging digital services, like the cloud, to fuel innovation and the ability to react to challenges and change. The burden of on-prem, manual maintenance that comes with monolithic applications restricts organizations—removing those confines allows companies to focus on what makes them unique. Instead of being stuck in organizational boundaries and barriers, leveraging services through cloud capabilities drives accelerated change for business drivers. We’ve seen this come to life first-hand through the COVID-19 pandemic.
How can organizations create a cloud-first mindset?
To create a cloud-first mindset or culture, organizations need to prioritize cloud-based solutions and view it as a default choice—something that is natural, instead of a hill to be climbed. Cloud services allow you to concentrate on the core of your business instead of maintaining servers so you can work to stand out among your competition. Cloud services provide an unparalleled opportunity to optimize your current state to be flexible and change as quickly as necessary. It allows you to remove technical debt and mindfully set your organization up for the future you want, instead of a future you’re stuck with because of choices you made 10 years ago.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many more companies have adjusted their cloud-related strategies to focus on the core parts of their organization and where they’re spending money—ultimately prioritizing initiatives that promote growth. We’ve seen organizations enter survival mode, mission-driven on flexibility, agility and security as more people are working in decidedly different environments. Many who were accustomed to working in office settings are now working from home in spaces that were never prepared for the type of demand we’re putting on them. Companies are doubling down on cloud strategies and are seeing a lot of success: media companies are expanding online content strategies and healthcare companies are adjusting to the demand for remote healthcare needs. So many industries that never had to consider cloud solutions before are realizing the need to move out of data centers to cloud services like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), that allow you to focus on what you need to be successful remotely.
Leverage cloud-based solutions to drive change and adapt quickly
As organizations move beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, I expect there will be a vast amount of companies focused on how to adapt to our new world and how to own change. Remote work is predicted to be much more common and organizations will need to be able to pivot quickly, spin up solutions and react to unknown scenarios. During the pandemic, companies that have been able to react and transform at speed have seen major success, while others who haven’t been able to leverage the cloud or scale have needed to play catch-up. TEKsystems has seen ourselves in the former of this scenario; we already had expertise and experience in cloud services that enabled us to develop a new platform that provides contact tracing for people as they move back to in-person communities, like work and school. We leveraged the cloud to deploy this platform to customers and businesses to create safer environments at a time when businesses need to adapt to new health standards that weren’t needed before—a testament to how the cloud can accelerate business growth.
If you want to start using cloud services or move completely into the cloud, just do it. Regardless of where you are in your cloud journey, one of the best ways to help adapt for the unknowns of the future is by investing in cloud services to manage the infrastructure so you can focus your time and energy on your business. Continue to reinvent, refine, build, transform—and let cloud providers and partners take care of the rest. They run data centers, so you don’t have to. Because of the vast capabilities that AWS provides, they have developed a partner network that includes tens of thousands of partners that specialize in cloud services that are there to help guide and teach you as you use those services and catch you if you fall. TEKsystems and 1Strategy are among those partners that have developed capabilities to help customers optimize their cloud services—replacing what may be a daunting task with a new and exciting ability to grow your business into the future.
1Strategy is a top-tier partner of AWS with proven expertise in helping companies get the most out of the AWS cloud time and again. Learn more about our focused AWS capabilities and how we can work hand-in-hand to build for the future. We’d love to meet with you to determine how we can help and whether there is funding available to start your cloud journey.
Jen Doyle is the vice president of operations at 1Strategy, a TEKsystems Global Services company and APN Premier Consulting Partner focused exclusively on AWS solutions.