9 cloud strategy questions every IT leader must answer

And it’s never too late for CIOs to reassess their cloud strategies.

“Many organizations are due to revisit their cloud strategies, as their businesses have changed and vendor offerings have matured,” says Brian Alletto, technology director at digital services consultancy West Monroe. Following are some hard questions IT leaders should ask about their cloud strategy today.

1. Why are we really going to cloud?

The first and most important question is so seemingly obvious that many IT leaders think they’ve got it covered. “If you ask someone, they’ll often recite a list of a dozen potential benefits of cloud — lower costs, better security, greater agility, and so on,” says Smith. But that doesn’t answer the question. A cloud strategy should be built on business outcomes the organization is seeking to achieve, which may then align with some of those potential benefits.

“The reality is, the cloud has a vast array of options, and there really is no one-size-fits-all solution,” says Ben McIntyre, vice president of enterprise solutions and architecture at Merchants Fleet. IT leaders at the 60-year-old fleet management firm determined that cloud could support its rapid growth without the challenges of maintaining data centers. “When [we] decided to move to the cloud and cloud-enable our solutions, it was a decision that was directly aligned with the long-term growth strategy of the organization,” McIntyre says.

2. Are key stakeholders truly on board?

It’s critical that all impacted functions are aligned on the business value of moving to the cloud. Only then will they be able and willing to participate, says Upchurch.

To do this well, IT leaders should uncover the key objectives of each stakeholder, tie those objectives back to enterprise business goals, and align everyone on common goals through top-down discussions and mandates, says Mukesh Ranjan, vice president in the IT services team at Everest Group.