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Cloud technologies have been playing a significant role in business transformation & disruption across industries for over a decade now. It has been the key enabler for several innovations and technology breakthroughs. The pandemic outbreak further accelerated the growth of cloud computing and businesses soon realized the several advantages over traditional methods of computing and storing information. For example, migrating to the cloud can help businesses save money by reducing the need for on-premises hardware and software. Additionally, cloud services can be scaled up or down as required, benefiting the businesses that experience seasonal fluctuations.

The end-user spending on public cloud services in India is expected to be around $7.3 billion in 2022, an increase of 29.6% from 2021, according to a recent forecast by Gartner. Indian businesses are also likely to focus their cloud investment on cloud system infrastructure services (IaaS) as this segment is projected to total $2.4 billion in 2022, up 40% from 2021.

While cloud migrations and cloud-native have become top priorities for organizations, it comes with their complexities. Businesses are still trying to navigate their way to attain the best cloud strategy. It has become necessary for enterprises to engage with the right partners that can help them create a comprehensive and secure cloud strategy.

Design cloud strategies to align with your business goals:Cloud services play a key role in making businesses more agile allowing them to operate freely. The first step to designing a perfect cloud strategy would be to clearly chalk out the goals that the business aims to achieve and the problems that the cloud will help solve. This approach will help in creating an adaptable governance framework with the flexibility to handle different implementation demands and risk profiles.

Cloud Architectures At first, most businesses began with public or private cloud models, but now with the growing online data, businesses are opting for a mix of public, private, and hybrid cloud models as it has more benefits. A multi-cloud architecture provides the flexibility needed for rapid innovation and lets organizations take advantage of the best-in-class cloud service that each cloud provider offers and at the best price without having to compromise due to provider limitations.

Cloud security With rapid migration to digital technologies for organizations across sectors, cyber security breaches have also increased simultaneously. Cyber security has now become one of the biggest concerns for every organization. The cloud architecture needs to be built in a manner that it is resilient, tolerable, and recoverable for the business to stay ahead of the curb.

Cloud security is an integral part of cloud strategy formulation for organizations. Security is a shared responsibility between cloud providers and customer. While cloud providers follow security best practices, customers are still responsible and need to make their own considerations to protect their applications and data hosted on cloud.

Successful cloud adoption depends upon placing appropriate security measures to defend against modern day cyber-attacks. This consists of security policies, controls, procedures, and technologies that are put together to protect cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure. It is highly recommended to consider the Zero Trust Security model, shift left approach in DevOps, Cloud Security Posture management tools and security tools that utilizes artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in your cloud security strategy.

Upskilling the talent Cloud computing has been around for a while now, but the technical professionals are still in the process of acquiring the required skill sets to manage the ever-evolving cloud environment. A lack of skills can result in delay or restrain a cloud project, inhibiting innovation.

Many businesses have built or are considering building talent enablement programs to skill and reskill the talent to cultivate the necessary roles within the organization. To address new requirements, employers are focusing on training their existing employees who are interested in acquiring new cloud-related roles.

While these important aspects can help in building, implementing, and maturing cloud computing strategies, new advancements are taking place every day. Cloud deployments are constantly improving and optimizing business outcomes, including speed, resilience, and agility. Nearly every organization today uses the cloud, as businesses need the flexibility and scalability of cloud services to respond to rapidly shifting and unpredictable economic conditions. Therefore, it is significant for businesses to chalk out a comprehensive cloud strategy not just to achieve overarching business requirements but to stay ahead of their competition.

The author is Sanjeev Prasad, Executive Vice President, APAC and Global Business Head Cloud, Coforge

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