Hi, A recent post I made on this issue that I think may be of interest and helpful to those who are planning a cloud migration. Reposted from here below... Accelerate Your Digital Strategy - Avoid Lock-In Digital Disruption has become the "Wolf at the door" as small nimble start-up businesses combine Cloud, Mobility, Social Media, IoT and Analytics technologies to create new ways to take market share away from traditional local based businesses (Uber, Netflix etc) This is why organisations are investing heavily in Digital Transformation programmes, to both adapt to the threat, and capitalise on the growth opportunities this presents. One of the single biggest barriers to an organisations ability to adopt a digital strategy, is the impact of capital depreciation and multi year licensing contracts from legacy IT investments. Remember, start-up organisations are not saddled with these challenges, and therefore tend to be far more agile in the development and iteration of new products and services. Lock-in is Pervasive Having worked for many years on ICT Outsource Due Diligence projects, I have gained a real appreciation for the scale of the problem, and the degree of lock-in that IT organisations unwittingly find themselves in. Standard procurement practices result in lock-in to 'Multi-year software licensing agreements' and 'Capital Investment' to obtain competitive pricing. However, these multi year 'residual costs' cannot be influenced in the short term by operational or strategic changes in business direction, and often represent a high percentage of an organisations annual IT costs. The net effect is IT Organisations lose control over their future direction, as their budget does not allow them the freedom to adopt new technologies, until assets are depreciated or contracts are up for renewal. For this reason many organisations are now employing a 'Cloud First' strategy to avoid this lock-in. Cloud Technologies can provide access to infrastructure and software on a pay as you use basis, with the ability to quickly scale up or down without up-front capital investment or multi-year software contracts. The Fast Eat The SlowWithout a change in approach every SAN, Server or Software License Contract that you purchase today, will slow down your ability to adopt agile cloud technologies. The sooner you break the 3-5 year capital lock in of purchasing on-premise equipment or software licensing agreements, the sooner you will be able to accelerate digital transformation initiatives in your business. Whatever your Digital Transformation strategy is, I recommend you break this cycle of lock-in to ensure you retain freedom of choice, and avoid being one of the "big that are eaten by the small"
↧