Before you take the leap to implement a cloud solution into your organization, it is important to ensure everyone is on the same page. This includes everyone from the IT team to the executive team. With our IT Infrastructure Advisory Support, business leaders and the IT team can easily examine both the business and the technology layers within their organization that not only points out the gaps, but also provides a step by step outline on how to close those gaps.
Because it’s important to stay on target, you need to ensure your business is prepared with a good plan and roadmap to ensure your cloud implementation runs smoothly. And rather than providing a generic solution, a cloud implementation roadmap goes the extra mile to help you understand your environment form a global perspective that ensures the solution is customized with existing and future requirements in mind.
What goes into a good IT roadmap?
1. Identify your strategic objectives
Clearly defining your strategic objectives and how technology will help you achieve them is a critical step to a successful IT strategy. Start with the list of the strategic priorities for the business (not IT-specific). These could include:
- What tools and information can help your team become more insightful, proactive and responsive?
- How can you deliver a better experience or create additional value for your customers?
- In what ways can you make it easier to do business with your company?
2. Create a timeline of your initiatives and projects
The Internet of Things (IoT) and other technology trends are becoming competitive advantages that draw in customers and create winners or losers in the marketplace. In developing your roadmap, set your sights on a longer time horizon and consider what you will need to stay competitive over the next three to five years. Technology that is flexible, scalable and expandable enough to accommodate your long-term needs will help you get the most out of your investment.
3. Define your list of priorities
Without clearly defined needs and priorities, there is no way to properly assess your options and plan effectively.
When creating your roadmap, you’ll want to:
- Review your business processes and highlight inefficiencies
- Identify technology gaps or areas where your existing systems fall short
- Identify the functional capabilities needed to effectively support or improve your processes
- Prepare an itemized, prioritized checklist of what steps need to be taken
4. Measure the cost
Make sure you research pricing and include a realistic cost estimate for each project in your roadmap. Also take account of additional or ongoing costs such as new infrastructure costs, subscription fees, annual maintenance and support fees.
This is specific and reasonably accurate for projects occurring over the next 12 months and can be vaguer for projects that go out farther than that.
Remember to keep in mind that using the Microsoft Azure Cloud in your business IT strategy can eliminate the need for costly hardware and maintenance, and mitigate many security vulnerabilities.
5. Establish timelines
Your roadmap should include a realistic schedule and timeline for your projects based upon your priorities, the duration of each project and available resources. Don’t forget to account for constraints that may limit your ability to execute—such as busy seasons.
Our IT roadmap strategy and the use of the Microsoft Azure Cloud helps limit any disruptions to your existing business processes so you can keep working while improvements are made.
How can 360 Visibility help?
Our team of experts at 360 Visibility can help you each step of the way. Our Cloud experts will work with you to understand your IT environment and assess your existing and future requirements and design an effective solution that you can easily grow with. We implement your cloud solution while minimizing any interruptions to your existing business services, and after implementation we continue to monitor, change, and make continuous improvements as your business sees change.
By using the Microsoft Azure Cloud in your business, you get unsurpassed performance, security, and scalability, all at a fraction of the cost of traditional servers and hardware investments. And best of all, you only pay for what you use, keeping your business overhead extremely small.