Two themes will drive cloud transformation success in 2020

Here we are, once again, at the turn of the year! Ahead, lies a new decade to look forward to! With more innovation within enterprises, fuelling new waves of disruptive transformation!

The cloud will lie at the heart of this transformation by enabling agility and efficiency within organizations. However, before the cloud can deliver on this promise, there are two key challenges that businesses must overcome. Turning these challenges into opportunities will absolutely be key to cloud success in 2020 and beyond.

#1: Businesses will look to simplify cloud adoption
One of the barriers to effective cloud deployments today is the overabundance of choice. Enterprises must decide between public, private or hybrid approaches and select from an overwhelming number of platforms, application and managed service providers – each one extolling the virtues of their services above all others’.

While this means businesses can create highly tailored solutions for their business aims, it also makes cloud management highly complex. In worst cases, this complexity can paralyze decision-making and stall cloud projects. It can also mean businesses fail to realize full value from their cloud investments. A recent Accenture study showed that two thirds of global businesses have not seen the benefits they expected from the cloud.

We predict that 2020 will be the year businesses start to address this challenge. In our conversations with enterprise IT leaders, we sense a growing appetite to systematically navigate cloud complexity. The time for adopting the cloud through trial and error is over – businesses are looking to learn from successes and failures of other companies to build strong business cases, define the right architectures and select the best partners from the get-go.

In 2020, we can look forward to a more rigorous and scientific approach to the cloud. Businesses will utilize advanced analytics tools to analyze their business needs on the one hand, and the cloud provider ecosystem on the other.

The result will be data-driven insights into which cloud solutions will deliver the most value for that particular business and each given use case. From there, we expect IT teams to use simulations to test these solutions on scaled-up models before committing to them. The result will be cloud systems that deliver as expected and tailored to business objectives.

#2: Cloud interoperability will become paramount
As mentioned, one of the benefits of the large number of cloud platforms on the market is that they give businesses the flexibility to choose the right solution for specific aims – whether that’s to meet the needs of a given workload, to drive efficiency, or to be fit for end-user requirements.

While businesses will be looking to reduce cloud complexity, many will also be seeking effective ways to manage multi-cloud environments. As a result, we expect to see cloud interoperability emerge as a top requirement next year.

Cloud interoperability refers to the ability of systems to work efficiently and effectively across various cloud platforms. It is vital for firms as they look to avoid vendor lock-in and create robust cloud infrastructures capable of handling fluctuating workloads. Cloud interoperability also allows firms to continue to leverage existing investments as they build out their cloud estate.

However, achieving interoperability is not easy as it requires full application data and component synchronization as well as a management system capable of maintaining performance across different cloud environments. Starting next year, we can expect to see the emergence of more common cloud standards, while cloud service providers will continue to develop more adapters, APIs and containers to facilitate interoperability across platforms.

Businesses that identify a need for cloud interoperability and move fast to adapt the latest technologies and standards will find they can improve the performance of their cloud investments, giving them a significant competitive edge. What’s more, the right interoperability approach will allow them to increase the RoI of their cloud systems.

2020 will be the year that many businesses get systematic about their approach to the cloud. As a result, these organizations will be well placed to make the most of the opportunities for the decade ahead.

• Kishore P. Durg
• The author is Senior MD and Lead – Accenture Cloud and Technology Growth & Strategy.