Increasingly, organisations are adopting cloud computing technologies. Some have moved to the cloud to remain digitally competitive, while others needed to facilitate the rise in remote working.
The benefits are widely recognised, and for those that have begun their cloud migration journey, the gains are evident.
Michel André, CIO at Banking Circle, says the organisation began its cloud migration journey pre-pandemic.
"The pandemic has not shifted our strategy - we actually started our migration around three years ago, migrating our client-facing front end and APIs. Since, we have gradually moved our core banking system to the cloud."
Abstracting cloud computing aids daily infrastructure management but choosing the right solution and its relevant hardware has to suit business needs.
"Hardware is not a consideration in a traditional sense for us, but implicitly you still manage hardware resources which is physical somewhere. It's still a consideration when buying cloud resources - what do we need? How do we scale? How do we provision the right way? To some extent, in the end the hardware is there," says André.
Cloud multipliers
As a growing business, he emphasises how the cloud has allowed flexibility and scalability where they need it most.
"Utilising the capabilities and infrastructure of the cloud to scale with the business and support geographic expansion has seen a tenfold performance improvement in some of our key workflows," says André. "We've been able to extend our opening hours to our clients just down to that."
"The ability to rapidly scale as we grow is a major factor," he continues. "Being in the cloud allows us to take that journey, allowing flexibility for building and putting client solutions in the face of clients, because we can provision and test things faster."
Embracing more cloud-first initiatives must be planned thoroughly. Having a clear strategy, complete with objectives, desired outcomes, success measures, and a clear cost plan are all important in fully realising the cloud's potential for your organisation.
"Organisations need to be contextual and see where they're coming from. If you want flexibility and scalability - a cloud strategy is vital," says André. "I think a lot of companies move to the cloud in a kind of lift and shift mode. They take the old and try and move it in a shoebox into the cloud. You need to be cognisant of where and if you should and lift, and where you should start from scratch and build anew."
Read Computing's latest report featuring IT leaders' views on cloud strategy, migration, and what they want out of their cloud solutions.
