Change in the business world today is widespread and hard to predict. For business decision makers, freedom of choice and action are essential, now like never before. Hidden constraints and barriers conspire against the agility and responsiveness that allow successful navigation through the challenges and on towards achieving objectives and ambitions.
Most firms now rely on Cloud to deliver, whether they are pure technology ventures or tech enabled organisations: Cloud is now a critical part of business and the way things work, or don’t.
While Cloud is a range of technology services, their central, supporting role means that they rapidly cause issues for the business if things don’t go to plan. Cloud decisions are not simply technology choices because of their capacity to entangle business operations and actions far outside the domain of technology.
There are three business reasons why independence in the Cloud matters for decision makers:
- Costs and terms can become unacceptable as needs and usage develop
Change may come from the business and usage patterns shift, leading to significantly different costs those from expected. The end of free credits and other incentives may present the business with significant new costs. A provider may change the costs and terms of service, or even withdraw or change a service that’s become critically important.
- Being locked-in denies freedom of choice and action
Most Cloud and hosting providers are make it easy to spin up new services, and some make it really hard to move away. Technology quirks, differential pricing and other techniques can create hurdles and barriers that constrain free decision making and agile action.
- No one brand or provider is best at everything
Most big branded hyper-scalers offer a full range of services, but none excels at everything. As needs become more complex and diverse, a more pragmatic approach brings out superior performance and cost dynamics by bringing together the best services from whatever provider is best in each case.
Freedom of choice and action, agility and flexibility are all key to business decision makers as we navigate this bumpy world of opportunity and change. Cloud is a big part of this for many firms, and independence is crucial for the business. Cloud strategy and choices go beyond the technical specifications to include the needs of the business and the dynamics of change.
Peter is chairman of Flexiion and has a number of other business interests. (c) 2021, Peter Osborn
