A guide to building your business case for the cloud
How to communicate the urgency of cloud migration to nontech executives.
Imagine this scenario: You understand tech. You’re an IT visionary. You’re entrusted to keep your business sharp, competitive and running at full speed into the future by bringing on the right technology at the right time.
But you can’t get your C-suite to understand how crucial a comprehensive cloud strategy is for your organization to succeed.
Why?
Because for people who don’t live and breathe the future of technology — and the opportunities that come with it — migrating a content services solution to the cloud may seem like just another inevitable technology that will happen … eventually.
But the inevitability of needing a cloud strategy won’t be put off, and we’ve got the roadmap you need to get started.
Keys to making your cloud business case
Cloud deployment aligns with business goals and creates pathways to positive results.
Here’s how.
Custom cloud infrastructure uniquely supports your content services platform
If your organization is already leveraging the power of a content management platform for your core business content and processes, you’ve already shown forward-thinking business leadership. Now, as you look to the cloud, you need the right infrastructure to not only support your platform, but also to capitalize on all its strengths and features. The optimal cloud delivery partner should be custom-tailored for your content services solution.
Cloud scalability positions your business for growth and eliminates physical limits
With more digitalization comes more data, and it needs somewhere to live and expand. Leading cloud providers offer exponential growth opportunities, whether it’s:
- Storage space
- Additional computing capacity
- Application, web or processing scalability
This means worrying about the amount of space available for storage as your organization expands becomes an archaic oddity of the past.
The cloud’s cutting-edge security delivers agile, unparalleled protection
Leaders in cloud delivery have stringent and proven cloud security methods. From physical guards, mantraps and fire-suppression systems at the data centers to agile and constantly evolving cybersecurity protocols, a vendor-managed cloud strategy takes one of the most stressful, expensive and important business factors off your plate and handles it with the highest standards.
Anytime-anywhere content availability in the cloud provides your workforce the access they need to thrive
Your business can’t cling to the workdays of old — paper-based offices and unsecured processes are rarely the best way to operate anymore. A robust cloud-enabled content management strategy gives your team secure access when they need it, from anywhere, and enhances collaboration while driving business efficiencies.
Cloud resiliency enhances your business continuity strategy
In today’s always-on world, the importance of ensuring your critical business systems run smoothly 24/7 isn’t a benefit; it’s an imperative. If you are managing your own data center, that means additional hardware, software and personnel to constantly assess system health. Leading cloud providers offer essential disaster recovery and failover systems, allowing you to focus on business value rather than business continuity.
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.
66% of leaders are migrating users and content off legacy systems and repositories
Leaders at top-performing organizations favor cloud, which is easier to maintain, configure and integrate, according to Forrester Consulting’s recent study, which was commissioned by Hyland.
Get the story of how organizations are tackling AI and automation capabilities in their content processes. Cloud is a large part of the narrative.
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:
| Who’s responsible for … | Self-managed cloud strategy | PaaS cloud strategy |
| Generating content and data | You | You |
| Configuring solution | You (or a partner) | You (or a partner) |
| Operating system, network and firewall configuration
|
You | Experts with the PaaS provider |
| Global infrastructure
|
You | Experts with the PaaS provider |
| Compliance and governance
|
You |
Experts with the provider |
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.
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About Hyland in the cloud
Hyland is a leading intelligent content solutions provider with a range of cloud-based technologies, solutions and services.
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