April 2016CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM8"Cloud-First": Catalyst for Business Transformation or Bust?Meerah Rajavel, CIO, QlikA Decade ago Cloud was all the Hype While CIOs saw the potential for it to transform many aspects of IT, they saw the Cloud's shortcomings in critical areas such as security, compliance, and monitoring as preventing them from entrusting their mission-critical assets to Cloud providers. That's why virtualization occupied center stage as a must-have with Cloud for most of IT decisions. Not to mention there was uphill battle for many IT organizations to articulate a business case with a hefty investment and an architecture change. Fast forward a few years, and we saw vendors such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and more embrace the concept of virtualizationand taking it to the next level with multi-tenancy. Combining technology innovation with a subscription-business model shifted the economics significantly for the business user. This acceleration and adoption in the business application space surpassed infrastructure from a Cloud perspective, driving many enterprises to make an explicit effort to implement a "Cloud-First Policy." This movement was led by the business sponsors with IT as co-pilots. And here we are today: Cloud has crossed the chasm and the benefits have become difficult to ignore. But the lingering question remains, "Is Cloud-First still a viable strategy for business transformation?" The answer is it depends.The Cloud-First RealityAs cloud adoption continues to grow and its benefits become more widely understood, more IT organizations are realizing the need to develop and implement their own cloud-first strategy. Some may not call it a "cloud-first" strategy any longer, but Cloud is still at the forefront of their transformation. Many organizations are taking the same Cloud journey: moving business applications, followed by infrastructure, and then moving into Data and Analytics. Stability, efficiency, and speed are the most critical and common success measures for many IT organizations. Today, IT measures the success with business in three critical areas: stability, efficiency, and speed. With Cloud, organizations have been able to influence progress in all three areas. Typically, IT goes through an excruciating In My Opinion
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