A guide to building your business case for the cloud

Responding to objections to moving to the cloud

Objection: We don’t have the people we need to adopt cloud infrastructure.

Exactly — cloud infrastructure is complicated and specialized. We need our IT team to focus on their strengths, not on trying to build a bridge to the cloud that they aren’t trained for. Launching a cloud strategy for our content management solution means we would get all the benefits of the cloud — better security and accessibility, room for growth and infrastructure that supports our business initiatives — as well as a specially trained team of cloud experts who would get us there and keep us running, no matter what’s going on in the world. It’s a win-win — our IT people could focus on moving our business forward, and we get better strategic business opportunities with fewer headaches.

Objection: The cost of going to the cloud is too high.

But are you thinking about costs we can eliminate, too? We’re already paying a huge price for hosting our content — the operational costs of staffing, overtime, maintenance and physical security are a big part of our budget, and our content isn’t getting any easier to maintain.

We also need to think about the risks we take: Is our content as secure as it should be? Keeping up is going to get more and more expensive and complicated. With a content services strategy, we can shift that budget to a team of cloud professionals, and they can deal with any issues that come up while we focus on our business. Yes, it’s going to cost some money — but at least it’s going toward a long-term solution that creates agility and drives efficiencies.

Objection: It doesn’t feel safe to put our data in someone else’s hands.

I think you’d be surprised. Our team is working hard, but compared to leading security best practices, we’re really not on that level. Whether you look at it from a perspective of physical security, disaster recovery or cybersecurity, our content isn’t as secure as it could be for the caliber of enterprise we are.

Our cloud data security and protection protocols are just a segment of our primary business, but the teams that manage cloud infrastructure as their main deliverable are leagues ahead of us — we’re talking layers upon layers of defense, from constantly evolving cybersecurity, disaster-proof redundancy standards, automated security patches, encryption at-rest and in-transit, and uptime at 99.99%. And, when we put our content services platform into a managed cloud, we also enhance the security of that investment at an application level.

Exploring cloud management options

• Does your organization’s mission include a passion for servers, cybersecurity and content storage?
• Does it have a sizable and cloud-skilled IT team?

If not, your most efficient (and most cost-effective) path to your modernization plans may be a managed services approach.

Self-managed cloud vs. PaaS

In a self-managed cloud scenario, your business pays a host for data space, but you and your team are responsible for managing all the cloud services, from installation to updates to protection.

With a PaaS scenario, the cloud provider delivers all of these services.

Both can work. But the right path depends on your team, your business goals and your willingness to invest — and keep investing — in bleeding-edge cloud infrastructure.

Self-managed cloud and PaaS strategies at-a-glance:

Your cloud strategy positions your business for the next generation

Today’s technology climate doesn’t reward stagnancy.

You need action, innovation and the willingness to evolve.

Now is the time to make your cloud business case, so your enterprise can power forward into the next generation.