Today, business models, new products, or solutions change fast. The time to execute became the metric for business success. Cloud business applications keep up with this pace because its architecture is based on short sprints, fast deployment, and adaptability. Legacy IT falls behind and becomes a business risk.
Microsoft made billions with Windows and today you can download it for free. 2016 Adobe stopped selling their standalone software packages. Notebooks do not have a CD or DVD drive any longer. Why all of this? Because business and IT have shifted towards cloud.
All applications run in the cloud: Office 365 or Adobe Creative Suite. It means collaboration in real-time, security all the time, and instant updates. Nobody wants to rely on a DVD purchased two years back. And companies like Salesforce are cloud only. This is the price of the always-on culture.
Today, business means to adapt fast to market changes (data volume vs. subscription models), being able to scale the business (one customer vs. countries and regions) and to be safe all the time (central security vs. decentral security).
The bad news: This is not possible for a non-IT company as the digital world changes too fast. No company can afford to have all the experts in one place.
The good news: Switching to cloud applications gets you to the top IT-wise. You outsource the IT innovation to service providers who keep the pace because it is their must to survive. An example is AI as it is accessible as a service and fully integrated. All big service providers offer AI today. The time to market was in months. One more thing: you switch cost from CapEx to OpEx.
The message can only be: cloud-led business applications are the backbone of digital transformation.
Companies face huge challenges with digital transformation across all sectors. The pressure to innovate and customer expectations keep rising, IT landscapes are at the heart of value creation. And yet, according to recent studies, up to 75% of CIOs find it highly challenging to balance operational excellence with business innovation. A delayed product launch of 6 months can result in a loss up to 33% of potential revenue over five years.
Let us look at the automotive industry. The Electric Vehicles (EV) disrupted the market. EVs are different and they cannot be handled as classical cars: different R&D, new workforces, different regulations in different countries. The classical IT way would be having committees to discuss the changes and build plans.
Business will fall apart when you do not switch to cloud because new business opportunities are blocked. This is a risk because fast scaling, delivery and business creation are not possible with classical IT systems.
Nitin Arora, Head of Industry Business, T-Systems International GmbH
We helped our automotive customer with the cloud migration:
The results
These numbers show competitive advantage where cloud business applications create opportunities.
The same is applicable in the development of software-defined vehicles, platform vulnerabilities in manufacturing, or business model shifts in the energy sector due to renewable energies.
We see the same demands across industries:
The major question is how to implement all this? Complex situations need a structured plan. We call this T-Systems @Vantage framework.
Implementing it means transforming any IT department from a ‘service’ to the driver seat of business.
“It is historically grown.” We hear this often from customers when we talk about their IT systems. Such legacy systems can be hard to modernize, as they tend to be heavily customized and deeply integrated. Regular examples are CRM or ERP systems. An instant shift to cloud will not fix the problems. Cloud migrations need a good plan.
The four-step T-Systems @Vantage framework helps:
These four steps cut the complexity into pieces. Of course, there are always concerns. Let us look at the common issues we hear from customers.
“What happens to my existing IT team?”
The fear about overstaffing appears with every new IT project. It is always a question of the focus. With cloud, the focus of IT shifts towards integration, security, and data governance. Managing value creation and business value is different from managing maintenance. The new IT role is business enablement.
“We’ve invested millions in on-prem systems.”
Switching to cloud can look like revisiting prior decisions. The truth is that IT strategies change over time and switching to cloud is not an instant switch. There are migration phases and hybrid strategies. It is always the right moment to build the path forward.
“Is the cloud secure enough for our business-critical apps?”
We live in security by design IT-era. Concepts like SASE or zero trust models are the security paradigms. Plus, Deutsche Telekom uses the highest German standards and runs a sovereign cloud. We have never lived in a world with more IT-threats and with more IT-security at the same time.
Companies like SAP, Microsoft or Salesforce have a cloud first or cloud only strategy. Business will fall apart when you do not switch to cloud because new business opportunities are blocked. This is a risk because fast scaling, delivery and business creation is not possible with classical IT systems.
Technologically, the focus of the classical IT architecture and strategies was tailored to serve a few client groups. Cloud architectures are for fast business adaptations to serve plenty of global customers. And cloud software gets permanent updates with features, options, and possibilities. You get permanent innovation for free. The best time to start the cloud journey was a year ago, the second best is today.
