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When cloud computing came on the scene roughly 20 years ago, many companies made forays into cloud services without a solid plan for how or even why to use them. In those early days, business leaders chasing speed and flexibility commonly sought to move particular applications to the cloud, paying for them individually rather than as part of an overall strategy. Governance and data ownership were afterthoughts at best.
But such piecemeal moves to the cloud led to complexity and escalating cost. Even giant companies such as Netflix, which had made major commitments to cloud computing early on, found themselves retrenching — even bringing some workloads back on-premise — when cost became an issue. Taking the time to chart a deliberate and measured cloud strategy might not have made everything perfect, but it certainly could have helped.
Developing a comprehensive cloud strategy is a big undertaking and an important one. A full-fledged strategy should take a consistent approach across multiple systems (including public cloud, private cloud, and on-premise) to ensure that features and services, compliance and security, governance and visibility, and data control are all working together and are managed from the same place. Done well, a cloud strategy can help drive the highest performance for organizations while keeping costs from growing unexpectedly.
This Strategy Guide offers expert insights and practical advice for developing a flexible, scalable approach to cloud computing.