Avoid These Cloud Computing Mistakes

Cloud computing is quickly becoming a critical necessity in the modern digital era, but organizations and their IT leaders are not always migrating successfully, according to Gartner.

In fact, the IT analyst firm says organizations are making several critical mistakes when building out their cloud strategy and aren’t using the business strategy to drive their cloud strategy and provide guidance to IT professionals who are tasked with implementing the technology.

A good cloud strategy must coexist with other strategic efforts and not try to completely overhaul the business, the analyst firm says.

The recommendations to IT and business leaders comes during the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference 2022, being held in London this week.

The firm lays out 10 common cloud strategy mistakes, including assuming that cloud implementation is only an IT strategy. Essentially, business and IT leaders should avoid labeling cloud computing as an IT strategy and then trying to push it on the rest of the organization.

In addition to devising a cloud strategy in the first place and including an exit plan from cloud providers, Gartner recommends that organizations keep open the possibility of not moving everything to the cloud. An approach that includes everything being migrated to the cloud could turn off some business and IT leaders, according to Gartner analysts.

While organizations should keep their cloud and data center strategies separate but aligned, they should not simply adopt cloud computing as a cost-savings directive from leadership. Instead, IT leaders should treat executive mandates as sponsorships to device a cloud strategy and not as a strategy in and of itself, Gartner analysts recommend.

Organizations should also avoid labeling themselves as a user of one specific cloud vendor, and business leaders should accommodate multiple cloud services, vendors and non-cloud environments. Similarly, IT leaders should refrain from focusing only on the cloud in a cloud-first strategy and instead work out the exceptions to the default choice.

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