• 1 min read

Five principles of innovation in the cloud

If you work in IT you may have noticed that you live in a world of competing agendas. On one side are the forces that expect you to do what you have always done, “keep the lights on.” On the other,…

If you work in IT you may have noticed that you live in a world of competing agendas. On one side are the forces that expect you to do what you have always done, “keep the lights on.” On the other, you are being driven to innovate so you can seize new opportunities, support evolving business needs, and better serve customers.

Despite the tendency to be risk-averse, as more and more companies move to cloud environments certain principles have emerged to help foster a more innovative IT mindset, and a more central role for IT within the corporation. The following are some of the tenets for making this transition, as covered in the book Enterprise Cloud Strategy (2nd ed.) and the related upcoming webinar:

  1. Go fast: The cloud enables projects to be spun up quickly, which allows you to “try many, use best,” and learn quickly from what doesn’t work.
  2. Push the boundaries: IT not only needs to adapt to the cloud, but embrace new architectures and processes, and test limits, including designing “net new” apps and refactoring legacy apps for PaaS and SaaS.
  3. Make data-driven decisions: Use the monitoring and analytics capabilities of the cloud to track costs and technical efficiency so you can make smart decisions about which apps are generating the biggest return.
  4. Simplify: Retire, consolidate, and right-size as many services and applications as possible to free up resources.
  5. Communicate to succeed: Establishing clear, ongoing communication with stakeholders is the single most important factor for successful innovation.

You’ll find in-depth guidance on encouraging experimentation and other important facets of cloud migration in our webinar featuring authors Barry Briggs and Eduardo Kassner.

Sign up for the webinar!