Interview with Vít Grossmann: Zoo does not belong in the cloud
What to take with you to the cloud, what to leave in front of its gates and how to find out at all? Vít Grossmann advises the largest companies on how to get the right answers and not to loose money with the cloud adoption.
Vít Grossmann
He has been working on demanding IT projects for more than 20 years. In recent years, he has been conducting clients in the areas of cloud compliance, cloud strategy, cloud qualification and readiness consulting. During his career he helped customers such as Generali, the ERSTE Group, including Česká spořitelna, Société Générale, ČSOB, Kooperativa or the Raiffeisen Bank International Group.
Surely you often answer the question, “What is a cloud?” But let’s start unconventionally: What is not a cloud?
The cloud is not a magical place where all your (IT) problems disappear. Certainly not. The cloud is also not Someone else’s computer either, as some jokers wear on their T-shirts as they try to rip the server out of their racks, cursing the company for not being in the cloud yet.
Okay – so what exactly is a cloud?
To me, the cloud is the way I do IT. I learn so-called “cloud behavior” from the best: cloud providers have learned absolute efficiency, automation, scalability, robustness, and other “superpowers.” To follow up on the previous question: The cloud also acts as a magnifying glass or amplifier of the difficulties of my current IT.
Magnifying glass? Amplifier? Do you speak in cloud ciphers?
I wouldn’t like that. In short, if you don’t have a tidy IT, but you have a technological zoo there, that you keep afloat by hand, where each installation is unique, then any such non-standard costs you money in the cloud. At the end of the day, you can end up in 50:50 mode, where you will need two parties to run your IT: an old one at the zoo and a new one at the cloud.
That sounds like horror. So shouldn’t we avoid the cloud?
That would be coward to say that! The cloud, when well conceived, thought out and planned, can bring significant benefits. This applies not only in the area of savings, but especially in the support of your business, scalability of the business, the possibility to try anything quickly, adapt quickly, or leave it quickly. Cloud technologies will also help you not to “become obsolete” – forcing you to innovate and keep your finger on the pulse of time.
That sounds better, but where to start?
The starting position is determined by the maturity of IT in your organization. Some are burdened by historical investments, others by applications or the expertise of IT colleagues. That’s why we’re used to start with a quick review of a company’s IT maturity and- to identify core strategic goals it can achieve in the next 1-3 years. The creation of such a cloud strategy, of course, depends on the business or existential ambitions and needs of the organization.
When will a cloud strategy be successful?
When you think about a lot of questions. Where am I and where do I want to go? How do I prepare for and manage change? How will this affect my employees, customers and partners? Where will it help me? What knowledge and skills do I need for such a change? And where to take them when I don’t have them?
That’s a lot of questions.
Yes. But behind them will come the answers, including a clear plan for where to go, where to invest time, money and what it will bring you – among other things, how much you will save.
So how much will we save? And is there evidence for that?
Successful implementations of cloud strategies have repeatedly confirmed to us that the savings come in 2-3 years of precise work.
Is the road the destination?
Partly yes, it is cloud journey. But in this case, it pays off not to stay in the middle of it. It takes time to set sail with the right captain and not get shipwrecked. So I wish everyone a successful cloud voyage and no reef!
The text was published in April 2021 in Hospodářské noviny, ICT Review Magazine
