Industry executives and experts share their predictions for 2020. Read them in this 12th annual VMblog.com series exclusive.
By
Emily Lewis-Pinnell, VP, Cloud & Application Transformation, NTT DATA
Cloud Adoption Across the Enterprise
The rapid growth of cloud has been a sizeable force in the
industry for over a decade now, but the unrelenting pace of growth has recently
run against a century-old wall: the slow pace of change across a larger
organization.
It has been several years since organizations jumped into
the cloud market and proven successes abound, with cloud-native DevOps teams
running critical apps, C-suite executives touting their success with AWS,
Azure, and GCP, and a multitude of case studies encouraging others to follow
their lead. Yet even within well-known cloud adopters, wide-scale transformation
making appropriate use of agile cloud-native capabilities across the entire IT
landscape remains a challenge.
Driving change across a large organization can often feel
like turning a freighter and requires care and planning not required for a
smaller company. In 2020, expect expanded attention to addressing issues in
changing people, processes and culture, to enable successful technology
adoption.
The Rate of Change Isn't
Slowing Down
The rate of innovation across the tech industry continues to
unlock benefits as new services, tools, and technologies introduce innovative
opportunities to drive value to the business. Yet the ability to adopt
constantly evolving technology is a real challenge for larger organizations,
which must maintain alignment and scale approaches across a larger number of
people.
Organizations often correctly start down the path of proof
of concept (PoC) with specialized teams to explore several cloud use cases, which
then leads to a transformation plan. Alternatively, many are leveraging
greenfield applications, which can be created by using modern architectures to
scale more easily based on design. However, at this point, someone often questions
if they should consider another tool they are hearing about from their peers. Then,
after a few months, another rising technology is suggested. This need to remain
competitive and deliver new features to end users is hampering transformation
rather than driving it, because corporate churn is being placed over strategic
decisions.
Leaders must avoid this continuous loop of planning
paralysis, as tradeoffs between cloud providers, use of containers versus cloud
native, architectures and methodologies are endlessly debated, with new options
appearing each round. Two years later, organizations have often made no
meaningful progress.
The fear of missing out on the next big thing is justified,
but that leaders cannot allow that to paralyze their organization, because the
rate of change will not slow down in 2020 and beyond. Expecting a pause in the
industry that allows you to gather all the necessary information and make a decision
is unrealistic. Leaders must avoid analysis paralysis for a successful cloud
transformation. As pilots perform well, don't be afraid to scale, with an
expectation that change will continue to evolve over time.
The Common Pitfall
Making a decision on rolling out new technology across an IT
ecosystem can be a difficult decision, but even when leaders are willing to
make their bet, they often stagnate on perceived challenges around change
management. In 2020, people and processes will be the largest threat to
enterprise transformation.
Leaders spend numerous quarters and even fiscal years
debating cloud strategy and the technical logistics, but when it is time to
implement a new idea across the enterprise, projects come to a screeching halt
for fear of disruption - for both employees and processes.
So, you had a successful PoC and have specialized teams in
place - now what? Adopting a culture of change is critical in any digital
transformation. Doing so requires addressing the real challenges in changing
how people, processes, and culture work across the organization, and companies
that continue to make this an afterthought will not be successful.
Employee training and reskilling is a priority, but first,
leaders must think through how roles will change, and how the corporate DNA
must evolve to become more nimble. As technology changes how we work,
organizations need to be flexible, agile and able to change. Significant
thought and planning is required to galvanize the organization and evolve to an
ability to manage ongoing change.
2020 Expectation
Technology will continue to move forward rapidly, leaving
many companies and indecisive leaders in its wake. Decision-makers must be
willing to make bets and be more decisive to lead their organization into the
new decade. There isn't an opportunity to wait until everything has been sorted
out. Be flexible with your transformation strategy and plan from the start to
support ongoing adjustment to incorporate new technologies and ideas later.
Moreover, before you plan a cloud strategy, don't forget how
it will affect your organization. People and processes need to be the start of
your transformation rather than an afterthought. Without this, cloud adoption
will suffer.
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About the Author
Emily Lewis-Pinnell is the VP of Cloud & Application
Transformation for NTT DATA, a
top 10 global IT services provider. As part of the company's Chief Digital
Office, Emily is responsible for the Journey to the Cloud portfolio of services
focused on driving new value for clients through cloud transformation,
application development and modernization, and digital enterprise application
services. Emily has 20 years of IT industry experience in software development,
operations, marketing, corporate strategy, portfolio management and sales. In
that time, Emily has worked with hundreds of clients across a broad range of
platforms, technologies, and tools, helping them transform their IT
environments and successfully plan, migrate, and manage their businesses in the
cloud. Emily has a BS in Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from
the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.