How to Make the Cloud Culture Shift

Last updated on February 4th, 2023 at 2:44pm

We just wrapped up a webinar where we partnered with AWS to present Enabling the Cloud Culture Shift with Automated Governance. Our take: the more things change...

Yes, technology is obviously a big part of the seismic shift to the cloud. But, as in every tech shift, it still comes down to people, process, AND technology:

I recently came across a great line from the folks at Softchoice: “If you’re still thinking of the cloud as a location to put your data and applications, stop. Cloud is a model, not a place.”

Successful cloud transformation requires a move away from legacy IT practices like requesting servers toward self-service provisioning. The transformation also requires moving from legacy cultural practices like centralized management of resources to delegation with assurance.

But these moves can be scary for several reasons. Fear of cost overruns, compliance violations, and security breaches often stall or even prevent enterprise-wide cloud use. From a people perspective, fear of change and job obsolescence can impact the speed of your move to the cloud.

Trying to take traditional IT approaches and port them to the cloud won't calm the fears because these manual processes don't scale and they introduce the potential for error. Just as troublesome is the labor required for these old processes - beyond the obvious cost implications, your team members will miss the opportunity to innovate because they're too busy 'keeping the lights on'.

Combining best practices with automated governance helps to calm fears and reduce roadblocks. For example, you can manage concern about cost overruns with budget enforcement actions that freeze spend when a threshold is reached. Fears about compliance violations can be tackled when you automate the setup of accounts and have these accounts automatically inherit policies that match your compliance regimes.

For more best practices around making the culture change and examples of how automated governance addresses specific fears, check out the webinar replay. If you'd like a deeper dive into how cloudtamer.io delivers automated governance, contact us!