In a recent 2016 study conducted by MongoDB , 2116 respondents were surveyed about cloud adoption . The key learning cited that , “ agility , speed of innovation and time-to-market have surpassed cost savings as the key drivers of cloud adoption .” This finding supports our own observations and experiences across our engagements at Cloud Technology Partners ( CTP ). IT organizations need to become more strategic by using innovation to drive business strategy . More IT dollars and more emphasis is being placed on IT ’ s ability to innovate and partner with business stakeholders . Cloud adoption further enables and accelerates this ability .
The cloud also serves as the foundation for disruptive technologies like IoT , machine learning , analytics , mobile internet and blockchain . The technology sector is investing heavily in enabling these domains in the cloud and that is where the lion ’ s share of R & D and product investment dollars are going . For any enterprise , technology or otherwise , to be successful driving growth with disruptive technologies , they too must embrace a cloud adoption strategy that incorporates innovation .
Growing Pains
As companies initiate their cloud adoption programs , their tactics to mature IT capabilities continue to focus only on IT Ops Transformation : Reduction in infrastructure costs , investment in operational capabilities to manage workloads on the cloud and operational agility . These are all important , however , if an enterprise ’ s ability to innovate has become the primary driver for cloud adoption , it needs to also mature their ability to partner with the business for successful innovation on the cloud .
Focus Areas for Maturation
Through our experience driving cloud adoption initiatives , there are six key areas enterprises need to invest and mature to fully take advantage of innovation in the cloud . These are :
1 . Cloud Development and Architecture 2 . Agile Methodology 3 . Experience Design 4 . DevOps 5 . Alignment with Business Stakeholders and Business Outcomes 6 . IT Ops
Cloud Development and Architecture
Application development on the cloud requires new approaches ; the traditional client server approach to development simply can ’ t be applied . New approaches fully leverage what the cloud offers in agility and scale . These include :
• Microservices
• Serverless Computing
• Containerization
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