CIO opinion
CIO OPINION
“
IT KEEPS
SYSTEMS
RUNNING AND
FINANCE PAYS
THE BILLS,
BUT NEITHER
DEPARTMENT
KNOWS EXACTLY
WHAT THEY ARE
PAYING FOR.
migrations being delayed, down-scaled or
even the cause of data loss. Testing DR plans
and provisions is essential to establishing
confidence, both in DR, and the ability to
roll-back if required.
In most cases, data is understood in its
primary context, such as CRM for sales and
marketing, and finance for accounts. This
singular view of data exposes a lack of
understanding about unstructured data and
its potential.
Failure to address this approach limits the
scope of cloud projects, leads to missed
opportunities, and fundamentally undermines
system design which also increases the cost of
re-architecting applications.
Legislation, such as GDPR and PoPIA, along
with industry regulations affects how data
is used and stored in the cloud. Failure to
account for these factors can cause cloud
projects to fail. Rules regarding data storage
and security are complex and easy to breach.
Factors to consider when moving to the
cloud are storing data in compliant systems,
and within the relevant national boundaries.
Information must be secured properly, with
40
INTELLIGENTCIO
safeguards in place to limit sharing only with
permitted partners.
And don’t forget, GDPR and PoPIA give
individuals complete control over their data
so systems need to enable that control.
Massive fines means a data breach is simply
not an option, and this risk can seriously
hamper any cloud migration project.
IT keeps systems running and finance pays
the bills, but neither department knows exactly
what they are paying for. Is the business
making direct debit payments for licenses or
contracts that are no longer required?
Without a deep understanding of financial
insight, businesses cannot build a TCO.
Companies need to be able to answer
questions like ‘if we don’t renew, what
happens?’ and ‘which resource does that
payment refer to?’
Lack of understanding of future
maintenance liabilities is another challenge.
When considering cloud migration, many
cost-benefit analysis exercises neglect to
calculate the future cost of maintaining and
supporting existing on-site assets.
“
BUSINESSES WITH
FAILING CLOUD
MIGRATION
PROJECTS
TYPICALLY LACK
SEVERAL KEY
INSIGHTS.
OEM maintenance contract costs can
increase by 20% each year, or more. And
it’s factors like this that are easily overlooked
when performing a cost analysis. To succeed,
businesses need to consider cloud migration
projects in terms of the cost of not making
the move to hosted infrastructure.
The hardest part of any successful cloud
migration is the planning and preparation
that takes place before work starts. But, the
rewards of a discovery stage to understand
the current state of one’s infrastructure –
and how applications and services are used
– can create a long-term impact. n
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