Cloud Strategy vs. Cloud Adoption Plan: What’s the Difference

Do you need Cloud strategy or Cloud adoption plan? Or both? Understanding the differences between these two related concepts will help you determine when to use each one.

So you want to lean hard into the Cloud. You’re sold on its scalability and cost efficiency. But you’re just at the start of your journey. Do you need a Cloud strategy? A Cloud adoption plan? Or both?

Join us as we discover the differences between Cloud strategy and Cloud adoption.

What Is Cloud Strategy?

Simply put, a Cloud strategy delineates the overall goals and techniques of a Cloud solution in your organization. This includes:

• What role(s) Cloud-based tech will play.
• What tools and solutions will be implemented.
• The expected usage of such tools.
• The benefits and goals of moving to the Cloud.

In short, a Cloud strategy bridges the gap between knowing you want to use the Cloud and getting there. No matter what type of Cloud implementation you’re looking at – public, private, hybrid or multi-Cloud – and which providers and solutions you’ll use, a Cloud strategy is essential. This applies regardless of the size of your organization, too.

Why Cloud Strategy Is Important

Incorporating the Cloud into an existing business environment is rarely easy. It can even present challenges when you’re building a new infrastructure or workflow.  As with any change or a new endeavour, mapping out your high-level goals will help you to stick to your plan.

Additionally, a Cloud strategy can help you select the most appropriate solutions. There are many providers of Cloud-based infrastructures, platforms, and tools; a quick overview of their offerings seems to indicate that they’re all providing pretty much the same thing (at least, if you’re comparing tools in the same space, such as web hosting services). But when you’ve developed a Cloud strategy, you have a better idea of the features you need and how this tool will be used – thus minimizing costly and frustrating mismatches between your organization’s goals and the technology used to support them!

Having a clear strategy in place can do more than reduce the hurdles associated with Cloud initiatives. It can help you reap the benefits of Cloud computing, which include agility, scalability, affordability, and enhanced support for cross-team collaboration and data sharing.

Building a Cloud Strategy

Creating a Cloud strategy can be complex in the sense that there are many moving parts in the process: collecting, verifying, and analyzing organizational and user requirements; understanding the various Cloud options and weighing their benefits; deciding what goals to achieve, and so on. And this will look different for every organization. However, the core principles behind building a Cloud strategy will remain the same. They are:

1. Defining the need, i.e. the what (business goals) and why (potential benefits) of Cloud computing.
2. Understanding the environment, both your company’s internal IT and organizational structure and the Cloud tools that are currently on the market.
3. Determining the measure, or choosing the KPIs you’ll use to benchmark performance, adoption, and success.
4. Drawing a roadmap, i.e. implementing a more detailed plan on how you’ll achieve these goals.
5. Developing a proposal to share with decision-makers.
6. Implementing (and revising) your roadmap – as a Cloud adoption plan.

That’s right – we just said “Cloud adoption plan”. And that’s because a Cloud adoption plan is actually part of your larger Cloud Strategy.

Cloud Adoption Plan vs. Cloud Strategy

If the Cloud strategy is your high-level map of goals, options, and objectives, the Cloud adoption plan is your detailed list of step-by-step directions. It will guide your onboarding and integration process with various Cloud technologies; that’s why you’ll see most major Cloud platforms offering a Cloud adoption plan or framework.

Just like a Cloud strategy, your Cloud adoption plan will help your transition to the Cloud as you roll out various tools and strategies. Before we talk about creating a Cloud adoption plan, let’s consider the benefits of this rollout.

Benefits of Cloud Adoption

What can spending time developing a Cloud adoption plan do for the final outcome of your project?

• Reduce expenditure and costs. By itself, the Cloud eliminates some capital and operational expenditure savings, thanks to its pay-what-you-actually-use model. It also reduces time spent provisioning and setting up new resources and doing maintenance, admin, and backup work, which also eliminates some expenses.
• Increase agility and scalability. We’ve already touched on this, but a carefully crafted Cloud adoption plan will make on-demand scaling, data pulls/sharing, and rolling out new tools easier and less expensive.
• Less complexity. By simplifying much of the routine IT/admin work, Cloud-based solutions also promote smoother delivery within the organization and easier transitions between teams and projects. It also makes continued testing, innovation, and improvement easier.

Of course, all of these benefits depend on having a suitable Cloud adoption plan. Let’s talk about how you can make that happen.

Stages in a Cloud Adoption Plan

As with Cloud strategy, your Cloud adoption plan will depend on your organization, business needs, IT infrastructure, and other unique parameters. But however you build your plan, it will pass through these four stages:

• Evaluation – Here, you’ll continue the analysis started in your Cloud strategy, but with an eye to specifics like choosing vendors and/or Cloud specialist partners and assessing the suitability of various tools for your needs.
• Risk Assessment – Before the rollout, you need to understand the risks associated with your choice of Cloud technologies and determine how to eliminate or mitigate them. You should also do another review of your IT infrastructure and decide what risks and potential changes may occur in light of these tools, platforms, etc. as well as from increased demand over time.
• Implementation. The wheels hit the road and your Cloud adoption plan goes into action. The details of this step are very much up to each organization, but your Cloud adoption journey isn’t over!
• Iteration and Improvement. You’ll continue to learn and make adjustments to your Cloud adoption plan – and even your Cloud strategy – as new tools and use cases arise.

Know the Difference Between Cloud Strategy and Cloud Adoption

Moving to the Cloud can bring enormous benefits – but like so many other transitions, it must be done with care and planning if it is to be successful. Your Cloud strategy will help you set the big-picture goals and link your plans to the business reality. And your Cloud adoption strategy will provide the details needed to oversee a Cloud implementation and its future iterations. Having both a strategy and an adoption plan is essential to any Cloud initiative.

Authored by: Manas Jain, Director– Data Engineering & Cloud Architecture at Absolutdata (an Infogain Company)

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