Optimizing cost and agility: 3 cloud-enabled actions for fluid, future-proof operations
Fujitsu / March 31, 2022
The capacity to change is critical for organizations to keep offering customer and societal value today and tomorrow . Accordingly, organizations are prioritizing agility in operations, technology and culture, for a faster and more cost effective response to changing market demands – and for a more sustainable future. In this blog, we explore what’s behind the new age of cloud-enabled agility, how you can embrace it, and the cost of standing still.
The new age of cloud-enabled agility for business and society
The need to increase organizational 'agility' has been preached about for years… but a new sense of perspective on it, changing motives for it, and the maturity of solutions to make it real have all shifted the landscape dramatically. Being 'agile' - that is the ability to rapidly flex, change, and continuously evolve from a financial and operational standpoint - has never been more important. It represents the future of how business services should be delivered and is a key part of what we at Fujitsu call becoming an 'adaptive organization', whereby agility underpins operational effectiveness, speed to market, ability to deliver new insight, and customer and societal value. This adaptive future is a key priority for most C-suite leaders* - and it should be for you.
The cloud is a key part of building that agility. Hybrid- or multi-cloud architectures provide the flexibility, speed, security, and resilience you need to fuel your journey to becoming an adaptive organization.
* Mark Wheatley, How adaptability skills can help to tackle novel problems, EY, July 2021
Crossing the chasm: from ‘cost out quick’ to ‘always optimal'
As a technology consultant, I am very familiar with organizations seeing their IT estates as an area to drive cost out quickly. And with the help of the cloud it can be done. The $20k per month Emerald Performance Materials managed to save, through migration with us, is just one example.
Every organization's perspective changed during the pandemic, with 71% of leaders admitting they were unable to keep up with external change during this time. Of course, the need to simultaneously meet market needs faster while changing delivery models and reducing costs, will have undoubtedly put pressure on you to do ‘more with less’.
For this reason, we’re helping customer continuously optimize both cost and agility in the cloud to future-proof the business for sustainable success. This might involve extending practices adopted during the Covid-19 period or re-setting the direction altogether. Either way, the overall outcome is being able to save, scale, and serve better. We see three initiatives as crucial to making this happen, which I'll now take you through:
- 1. Accelerating cloud correctly: right goals, right approach
- 2. Removing the technical debt 'ball and chain'
- 3. Continuous optimization for constant progress
Accelerating cloud correctly: right goals, right approach
Some years ago, there was a huge rush to the cloud. Worried at the prospect of standing still, cloud migration was heralded as the answer to seemingly every challenge. In particular: saving money through flexible commercials and enabling agility through scalability. But going 'all in' on public cloud and undertaking a mass lift-and-shift without detailed and joined-up strategic thinking (as many organizations have) has led to disappointment in terms of expectation vs. reality - and in many cases it has led to more cost, complexity, and compliance issues.
So, do cloud strategies need an overhaul? Well, following huge and hasty adoption during the pandemic, they should be carefully re-evaluated.
