Cloud Innovation: The Challenges of a Transformed Environment

Sometimes imagination falls short. A couple of decades ago, using a desktop computer to perform digital operations seemed, from the perspective of technological progress, one of the greatest achievements a company could attain in its relationship with customers and users.

Today, reality presents an environment that far surpasses the digital visions imagined just a few years ago: consumers using multiple devices — laptops, tablets, smartphones, and smartwatches — to interact with brands, contract services, make payments, access platforms, or manage information in real time. Even more remarkable, today’s digital products and services can achieve high levels of personalization, adapting to specific user characteristics such as age, consumption habits, interests, location, or digital behavior.

Cloud technology has played a central role in shaping this new environment. For organizations, this innovation has become a fundamental resource for enabling — with speed and efficiency — a new generation of digital services and experiences, as well as for leveraging enterprise data in the design of hyper-personalized offerings.

However, this evolution is also creating a new challenge for companies: avoiding becoming dazzled by the transformative power of technology and reinforcing the business perspective that should guide every cloud initiative.

The Cloud Vision Must Also Evolve

According to recent global studies, more than 60% of organizations are not satisfied with the results of their cloud initiatives. In a market clearly transformed by cloud technology, this trend may seem difficult to understand.

In reality, as several analyses point out, the reasons behind this indicator are well identifiable. On the one hand, encouraged by the progress already achieved, many companies are accelerating any initiative related to the cloud; they adopt a mindset of “moving to the cloud as quickly as possible, whatever the cost.” At the same time, organizations now have access to countless resources — providers, applications, deployment models, and specialized services — making the exploration of this vast ecosystem a priority.

By focusing exclusively on these aspects — the urgency to migrate to the cloud and the evaluation of technological tools — cloud projects reduce their chances of delivering optimal results because they lose sight of the business objective that should guide every innovation initiative. Organizations spend more time thinking about “how to get to the cloud” and less about “why they are in the cloud.”

For this reason, in a market increasingly driven by innovation, organizations must strengthen the strategic focus of their cloud initiatives, placing business objectives and operational priorities above purely technical considerations. In this context, companies should reflect on issues such as:

• The business case as the essential first step. Before entering technical evaluations, organizations must clearly define the business case their cloud project is intended to address: Which process needs to become more efficient? What benefit will customers or users receive? Which business indicator will the initiative impact? Every cloud initiative should have clearly defined business objectives.
• Some assumptions about cloud need to be reconsidered. Compared to other deployment models, cloud environments offer a simpler and more flexible path — companies only pay for the resources they use — to adopt innovation. While true, this statement has nuances that many organizations discover too late. Operating under the assumption of lower costs, companies often end up contracting excessive cloud capacity that, even when underutilized, continues generating expenses related to storage, technical support, maintenance, or cybersecurity. Cloud environments involve costs that are not always visible at first glance.
• The right solution in the right cloud. For adopting innovations such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud deployments are an extremely useful and cost-efficient alternative. However, organizations need to identify which cloud options best align with the business objectives they aim to achieve. Not all cloud environments are the same: different deployment models and cloud services perform better depending on the use case. Some solutions may be better suited for advanced analytics, automation, or AI initiatives. Companies must identify the cloud resource that provides the best capabilities for the solution they want to implement, rather than building massive hybrid infrastructures expecting every technology to operate perfectly within them.
• The personalization challenge goes beyond the cloud itself. Thanks to cloud technology, organizations can transfer and share information — quickly, securely, and efficiently — across multiple platforms, a critical process for developing personalized experiences. However, it is common for companies to discover, once the project is already underway, that their data lacks the quality required to generate truly useful solutions. In this sense, organizations should not underestimate the importance of ensuring the quality of the data that will support their cloud model; simply having data in the cloud does not guarantee it will be useful for achieving a business objective.

Cloud innovation will continue driving the transformation of virtually every industry. In fact, in response to consumers and users who expect fast responses, personalized experiences, and services available from any device, cloud technology will further strengthen its role as an essential resource for business operations and innovation.

However, to deliver the best results, this evolution must remain consistently guided by a strategic business vision.