Are you ready for Oracle Cloud Adoption?
Oracle is aggressively pushing its cloud applications suite to new and existing customers. Many organisations like the idea of “Cloud” but the lack of understanding and expertise in Oracle Public Cloud results in lower likelihood of realizing expected cloud benefits.
Do not adopt any cloud application simply to “move to cloud”. Ensure that all functional needs are met by the solutions you seek, and that the relative maturity of those solutions matches your risk tolerance. Carefully evaluate the suitability of cloud for your business before you decide to switch. There are significant cost and other benefits in moving to the cloud but it may not be for every company
Realize the benefits of Oracle Cloud Applications by following Cloud Deployment Best Practices
Moving to the cloud introduces benefits such as regular updates, ease of use, faster return on investments and potential reallocation of resources to more value-added activities, but there are new challenges to be faced. You will need to account for more frequent testing and business process evaluations, changing demands in skills, and a new approach to customizations. Adopt the following best practices to get the most out of your Oracle Cloud Applications:
- Embrace the concept of more frequent releases - upgrades of Oracle Cloud Applications are released three to four times a year. To fully utilize new features delivered by Oracle, organizations must embrace continuous improvement and should have the agility to adopt it.
- Prepare for more frequent but lighter-weight testing - frequent releases also mean more frequent testing on a regular basis. Getting business commitment to testing is an important part of moving to the cloud. In addition to vendor-delivered functionality, all extensions and integrations will also require testing. Consider investing in test automation tools and develop consistent testing processes.
- Plan for increased effort for building integrations - integrations for Oracle Cloud Applications are different when compared to on-premises solutions. Most customers moving to the cloud will be deploying applications from multiple vendors and/or interfacing with external systems. To account for these increased integration complexities, it is important to adequately plan and budget for technical development effort and allocate experience resources with cloud expertise.
- Adapt to the new business models - be willing to adapt to the new business models recommended by the Cloud application vendors and have an open mind to reengineer and standardize your current business processes. Changing standard processes offered in cloud applications are not advisable and may not even be feasible, unlike the on-prem applications. Consider the impact of the changes on business processes and controls and build a suitable plan for manging them starting early on in the project.
- Prepare for the skills changes required - Oracle Cloud Applications “as a service” will outsource application operations processes, and place business data under vendor custody, which would mean shifting from controlling to managing mode of external and internal services. To manage increased diversity of multiple vendors and complexity of multiple technology stacks, place more emphasis on the softer skills: relationship building, collaboration and understanding the business perspective.
Attend our session on “Latin America and Oracle Cloud Adoption” at Oracle Open World 2017 by Gustavo Gonzalez, CTO, IT Convergence & Oracle Ace Director
To learn more about Oracle Cloud Adoption, talk to our experts Sudhir Dubey, VP US Professional Services and Deepak Sharma, Senior Manager, Cloud Practice by writing to us at contact@itconvergence.com.
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