With the business realm evolving, enterprise IT needs are becoming more and more complex, and so cloud-first strategies are rapidly becoming foundational to how modern enterprises scale and innovate. In particular, the implementation of hybrid and multi-cloud architectures is growing more widespread as organizations seek to maximize their agility and scalability while also optimizing for security, compliance, and cost efficiency. In response to these emerging needs, IBM has created IBM Cloud, a global cloud computing platform that offers an all-in-one solution for enterprises looking to modernize their IT infrastructure. But unlocking the full potential of the platform requires a mindful approach that prioritizes digital adoption. Here, we'll delve into what IBM Cloud does and why digital adoption is so important to realizing its value.
Evolving enterprise infrastructure
IBM Cloud has been specifically created to support workloads in hybrid environments. It is highly flexible, leveraging open-source platforms like Red Hat OpenShift to enable IT teams to build, deploy, and manage applications on public, edge, and on-site clouds. Moreover, it also combines these capabilities with enterprise-grade security and compliance protocols, ensuring that regulatory requirements are always addressed. This enables businesses to simplify and streamline digital transformation processes like workflow automation, cloud migration, data integration, and operationalising AI.
The pre-integrated data, automation, and security offered by IBM Cloud Paks, and the ability to deploy anywhere with IBM Cloud Satellite, dramatically enhance the speed and flexibility with which enterprise IT teams can modernize. This is enabling organizations to evolve towards robust, modular, policy-driven infrastructures that meet their needs more effectively as they operate at a global scale. Companies that leverage this technology can quickly iterate to improve upon their applications and systems without risking non-compliance, security vulnerability, or loss of visibility. For those who can effectively leverage this technology, IBM Cloud opens up many opportunities.
Barriers to value realisation
Despite the extensive capabilities of IBM Cloud, it's not uncommon for organizations to encounter difficulty when it comes to actually realizing the full value of these cloud technologies. Rather than stemming from limitations in the cloud platforms themselves, the issue is typically with people and processes.
A common barrier is the existence of internal silos. When different teams at an organization are expected to take ownership of separate parts of its cloud stack, this limits visibility and makes it difficult to establish accountability. In situations like this, each team may be doing good work to optimize their portion of the stack, but without complete oversight, there can be a lack of alignment between functions, leading to programmes stalling due to miscommunication. Likewise, legacy processes that aren't optimized for the cloud, like ticket hand-offs and manual approvals, can also slow things down.
In addition to these organizational issues, those tasked with utilizing cloud platforms may encounter issues on an individual level. Dealing with unfamiliar application interfaces and navigating the different features and functionalities of the platforms may be challenging for new users, which can result in workarounds that restrict synergy. For IBM Cloud tools to yield optimal value, all functions need to work cohesively together, so end-user enablement is critical. This is where digital adoption holds relevance, as an adoption strategy is what will help employees utilize the tech as intended.
Driving cloud success through digital adoption
In the context of implementing IBM Cloud services, the advantages of an adoption-oriented approach are considerable, as organizations benefit enormously from reducing teams' time-to-competency.
The impact is especially pronounced when an adoption platform is used to facilitate better software onboarding. Delivery teams, for instance, can utilize in-product walkthroughs to reduce the learning curve with IBM Cloud products. Likewise, the role-based checklists and contextual prompts from a digital adoption platform can help follow best practices and avoid policy drift for consistent, secure, and compliant delivery.
Beyond the onboarding benefits, adoption platforms also bring insights for product management. For instance, they can access usage analytics that outline patterns in behavior and clearly indicate where users are experiencing issues. This can inform ongoing decision-making and guide continuous improvement, for example, by iterating on OpenShift templates or CI/CD workflows, which helps to minimize friction in development and deployment to reduce cycle times.
By embracing an adoption-focused approach, organizations can achieve greater consistency and efficiency so as to reliably realize the value of IBM Cloud products.
Summing up
The capabilities of IBM Cloud can be transformative for enterprises, but the platform must be implemented in the right way to maximize its value. By taking an adoption-focused approach that prioritizes guidance, monitoring, analysis, and continuous improvement, organizations can dramatically reduce time-to-competency, foster cohesion, and upscale their infrastructure to consistently enhance outcomes.