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Perspectives
Deloitte on Cloud Blog archives
Latest insights on cloud computing
Reimagining what cloud can do for your business with real-world insights and opinions on cloud computing.
About our blog
The Deloitte on Cloud Blog discusses how cloud computing can address issues facing business and technology leaders today and drive innovation to transform business for the future.
This blog is written by Deloitte Consulting LLP cloud leaders and practitioners, including David Linthicum, chief cloud strategy officer, and Mike Kavis, chief cloud architect.
Explore our archive
Containers and serverless as alternate cloud deployment options
August 10, 2023
With rapid advancements in cloud computing, many enterprises may no longer want to simply “lift and shift” applications to cloud because of potential limitations in scalability, complexity with deployment, and low flexibility. In such scenarios, serverless and containerized solutions can offer more cost-effective and flexible paths to leverage the value and benefits of cloud over server-based cloud deployments.....................Continue reading
Modern delivery and cloud computing
August 3, 2023
Cloud computing has grown exponentially in the past decade, with organizations across all industries adopting cloud to power innovation, provide more flexibility, and ultimately accelerate their speed to market. However, not all organizations have achieved anticipated returns on their cloud investments. Often, the cause is that these organizations have not transformed the way they deliver software-based solutions to conform with cloud-based delivery methods....................Continue reading
Cloud cybersecurity in health care
July 20, 2023
As with other industries, health care organizations have been rapidly migrating to cloud computing, largely because of cloud’s ability to help them modernize their information technology (IT) infrastructure. Cloud computing also brings new opportunities for health care organizations to adapt their security capabilities to mitigate risk presented by advanced threats while meeting the needs of a distributed workforce and customer base................................Continue reading
Human resources in the cloud
July 13, 2023
In today’s rapidly changing, increasingly competitive environment, health care organizations must have a productive, agile workforce to meet the needs of their consumers. To recruit the right workers, to the right positions, at the right time, it’s essential to deploy modern cloud-enabled technologies, coupled with a talent-development framework for understanding, articulating, and meeting talent needs across businesses and IT.................................Continue reading
Demystifying cloud migration
June 29, 2023
In the age of agile digital transformation, organizations constantly gauge the benefits of moving their systems and applications to the cloud. For many, migration to the cloud is no longer viewed as a choice due to the benefits it offers in an uncertain business ecosystem. Further, post-COVID, many organizations are also focused on building their digital infrastructure and may allot hefty budgets to harness the power of cloud. So, market analysis suggests significant growth in cloud spending in the next two years, supported by the demand and growing trend for cloud migration. However, one major game changer for successfully unlocking the value of cloud is the rightful implementation of cloud initiatives..................................Continue reading
Organizational constructs for a cloud transformation
June 15, 2023
Cloud computing is transformational for many organizations. Planning for and adopting cloud requires a thoughtful approach. Many who started their journey to cloud years ago are revisiting and evolving their strategy. One of the first decisions organizations need to make as they look to adopt cloud is who will lead the charge..................................Continue reading
Redefining content services in a cloud-native world
June 8, 2023
The evolution of cloud services presents an intriguing opportunity for companies to shift from an enterprise content management (ECM) philosophy to cloud-native content services. This blog explores the evolution of content services, its defining characteristics, and how an orchestrated and containerized set of microservices, built as an integrated cloud-native content services product suite, could become the modern and cost-effective alternative to legacy, big-box ECM platforms that preceded it. We also delve into available implementation options for content services.................................Continue reading
Taking cloud optimization to the next level
June 1, 2023
For government organizations, cloud computing has become a core enabler of their IT strategy. As such, it’s essential for those organizations to optimize cloud operations not just for performance but to help achieve more effective mission outcomes. However, maximizing cloud value creates the need for government organizations to change how they operate and go beyond technical and cost optimization to take a holistic focus on creating and maximizing value................................Continue reading
A new framework for reducing DevOps complexity
May 25, 2023
The Deloitte DevOps Cloud Platform (DCP) is a unified, multi-cloud platform for software delivery, automation, operations, and management that combines the best of DevOps tools and streamlines configurations, allowing teams to focus on core software design and development while leaving the rest up to DCP...............................Continue reading
FinOps: Optimizing cloud costs to increase value
May 18, 2023
More than ever, as cloud costs continue to rise, organizations are seeking ways to optimize their cloud spending. And as cloud usage keeps expanding, so does the complexity of managing and controlling costs. This is where FinOps comes in—a methodology that aims to optimize cloud costs by fostering collaboration and cooperation between financial management and cloud operations..................................Continue reading
Optimizing the value of cloud: The impact of optimization
May 11, 2023
In the previous posts in this three-part series, we discussed how businesses can optimize their cloud using a framework composed of four levers: waste management, consumption management, purchasing best practices, and cost-aware architecture. Each of these levers is supported by two enablers: alerting and monitoring, and automated tagging..................................Continue reading
Strategies you can implement now to rein in cloud costs
May 4, 2023
Cloud costs are rising, mostly because of increased demand for cloud services, complex pricing models that make it difficult to match price to value, lack of visibility into consumption of cloud services, and potential waste due to inappropriately allocated and used resources. To tackle this challenge, companies can implement several strategies to help mitigate rising cloud costs, optimize their cloud spending, and increase their cloud value.................................Continue reading
Cloud at the crossroads
April 27, 2023
For the past decade, the topic of digital transformation has dominated the conversation among CIOs, and it’s no surprise that cloud is at the center of these conversations, as cloud is at the core of most business and digital transformation efforts. Also, as artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming more accessible than ever before, it’s important to remember that cloud makes AI and other advanced capabilities more accessible and affordable than ever. But we still have a long way to go with ensuring that companies get the required returns on their cloud investments. Solutions such as FinOps and cross-cloud abstraction and services will play a critical role in boosting cloud success, and cloud’s long-term future is bright................................Continue reading
Optimizing the value of cloud: Four key optimization levers
April 20, 2023
In the previous post in this three-part series, we discussed how businesses can optimize cloud costs using four crucial levers: waste management, consumption management, purchasing leading practices, and cost aware architecture. Further, each of these levers is supported by two enablers: alerting and monitoring, and automated tagging. In this post, we explore each of these levers in-depth................................Continue reading
Superclouds: Rule over your entire cloud ecosystem
April 12, 2023
Superclouds are a topic that has really gained traction over the past year or so because companies are realizing that they can be a boon to managing cloud complexity and your ability to do multi-cloud management. If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest trends in cloud, don’t worry—you’ll be hearing quite a bit from me and other industry folks about superclouds over the next year and beyond. I think they’re going to revolutionize the cloud space and help companies drive more value from their cloud investments................................Continue reading
Unleashing digital value for cloud leaders
April 6, 2023
Most companies across the globe consider digital transformation initiatives as the cornerstone to accelerate change and maximize returns. But, most often, these companies struggle to find which actions help in creating value and which may impede it. How do investments in specific digital transformation—of which cloud strategies are integral—help or hurt enterprise value...................................................Continue reading
Optimizing the value of cloud: A guide to getting started
March 30, 2023
This post is the first in a series of three posts that highlight how businesses can get started with optimizing their cloud costs. While in the first post we look at why cloud cost optimization is a vital business need, and describe a practical framework that businesses can adopt, the subsequent posts will dive deeper into each lever of the framework and describe how businesses can derive value from them..........................Continue reading
An industry cloud imperative for banking and capital markets
March 23, 2023
While cloud adoption has continued to gain momentum, many companies need vertical solutions that involve cloud but go beyond to provide sector-specific capabilities. Industry clouds can fit that need, especially for the banking and capital markets (B&CM) industry, where they can help banks enhance their digital and business transformation journey and get an edge in a very competitive market. A recent Deloitte survey indicates that the vast majority (95%) of B&CM executives see cloud as the cornerstone of their digital transformation —which can also be seen in the growth of their cloud spending that is predicted to be almost 2.8 times higher than their overall IT budgets for the next four years. And, for most banks, cloud isn’t monolithic; it’s viewed as a combination of other technologies including AI and IoT that serve as “force multipliers” to their digital strategies.........................Continue reading
Machine learning operations (MLOps) in banking
March 6, 2023
With recent technological advancements, data has become an invaluable resource for organizations. Computational techniques like machine learning (ML) have enabled organizations to deliver better value to consumers at lower costs. Within banking, ML algorithms and analytics have improved end-user services, personalized customer experiences, prevented fraudulent claims, and boosted sales........................Continue reading
Tax transformation with cloud ERP
February 24, 2023
As enterprises assess their evolving business needs and embrace digital transformation, Tax stands at the cusp of delivering transformational business value. Tax departments can leverage their enterprise’s digital transformation projects as a spark to reimagine the Tax function and integrate Tax with other business processes. Further, digital business transformation, enabled by cloud ERP, creates an opportunity for Tax to achieve the changes necessary to meet future compliance challenges, manage risk, and provide insight into global tax positions.......................Continue reading
Three factors that will boost cloud value in 2023
February 9, 2023
Despite some hiccups and uncertainty around cloud costs and value, there are several factors that have the potential to positively affect how much value organizations can continue to derive from their cloud investments. They include how enterprises address cloud sustainability, the shift to multi-cloud, and supercloud strategies to rein in multi-cloud complexity. Ultimately, how enterprises handle these issues will have a large impact on their satisfaction with, and progress on, their cloud journey.......................Continue reading
Mitigating licensing challenges during cloud migration
February 1, 2023
Public cloud adoption has surged over the past few years, and while it has brought enormous benefits to companies that have migrated to cloud, it has also produced some unexpected challenges. For example, many companies that have moved to cloud have incurred complex software licensing issues—and costs—that have impeded their cloud journeys...................................Continue reading
DevOps and SRE: A capability model for these complementary roles
January 19, 2023
DevOps is an approach to application development with the goal of bridging the gap between development and operations teams. It emphasizes collaboration and communication to improve the speed and quality of software releases. DevOps automates the processes involved in software development, and it can enable the rapid and more frequent release of software. With DevOps, organizations can increase efficiency and improve their ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity..................................Continue reading
DevOps, SRE, and the reliability life cycle
January 11, 2023
The winds of change are blowing fiercely in the world of information technology (IT). Cloud computing, containers, serverless and other new technical capabilities are disrupting how enterprises develop, test, and release software products and services, and then support and maintain those applications and services in production. Critical to these dramatic changes in technology are the workforce demands, roles, and skills necessary to succeed in these high-change scenarios. Two roles in particular are increasingly in demand: DevOps engineers and site reliability engineers (SREs). While both roles have been around for several years, there is confusion around what each role is accountable for in a modern software delivery model..................................Continue reading
Effective Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) requires an observability strategy
December 15, 2022
Site reliability is a growing concern in the marketplace. A key priority is to make sure you have a sound observability strategy, because observability empowers SREs and production resilience. Regardless of whether your IT infrastructure is hosted on-premises, in cloud, or hybrid, having a robust observability capability to provide a 360-degree view of your applications, databases, and infrastructure health is key to avoiding major issues and making informed decisions. Your SRE journey must include a sound observability road map...................................Continue reading
Want to scale Agile? Leadership matters
December 8, 2022
Most leaders want better, faster business outcomes for their organizations, and many see Agile as a way to get them. It is—but only if it’s done right. And right doesn’t mean implementing Agile piecemeal, to put out fires throughout pockets of the organization. Right means understanding what you need from Agile, building a plan to get there, and—most importantly—scaling it to the organization with a thorough, strategic approach to make those better, faster outcomes a reality. And to get Agile right, leadership matters ... a lot.........................................................Continue reading
Multi-cloud management doesn’t have to be (so) complex
December 1, 2022
Many enterprises explore multi-cloud architectures because they can provide enhanced flexibility and scalability, and they hold the potential to optimize cloud environments to business needs. Simply put, a multi-cloud approach enables organizations to choose the best services and features of different cloud providers, so they can leverage the tools they need and customize their environment to meet their performance requirements..............................................Continue reading
Choosing the right instance strategy for ServiceNow HRSD
November 17, 2022
As companies realize the advantages of delivering HR and IT services to employees and customers via ServiceNow, they naturally begin to consider ServiceNow’s HR Service Delivery (HRSD) module to manage employee demand for HR services and information. The overall benefits of HRSD are clear: a more responsive and streamlined employee experience, functional cost savings, and simplified maintenance. Typically, company leaders are less clear about how to make the key decisions involved in the transition to HRSD, and these decisions can have far-reaching implications in terms of the benefits that their companies will ultimately realize..................................................Continue reading
Lead digital transformation from the top
November 16, 2022
Digital transformation may be a buzzword, but it’s the lifeblood of any company that wants to handle disruption and meet competitive challenges more effectively. Everyone has a unique definition of digital transformation, but it typically involves implementing new tools, platforms, and business models to enable competitive differentiation. Figuring out their exact roles in digital transformation and where they should be focusing are a few among the litany of problems today’s leaders are confronted with while on the journey to transform the digital core of their businesses.................................................Continue reading
From cloud first to cloud serious
November 2, 2022
Cloud has been a viable technology for well over a decade, and it has dramatically revolutionized the information technology industry. Over that time, there has also been remarkable growth in the cloud landscape. The cloud industry is now dominated by several hyperscalers, and there are other, smaller, providers that serve a growing number of customers worldwide................................................Continue reading
Modernize streaming solutions with Amazon MSK
October 26, 2022
Running Apache Kafka to support streaming data solutions can pose a challenge for developers and DevOps teams. This, at times, introduces the need for development teams to also function as experts in operating Apache Kafka. Amazon Managed Streaming for Apache Kafka (MSK) provides a fully managed service for Apache Kafka clusters. With MSK, you can let AWS run and manage your Apache Kafka clusters for you in the cloud, enhancing your streaming data applications and making it easy for you to collect, process, and deliver streaming data in real time.................Continue reading
Industry cloud benefits and challenges
October 13, 2022
Industry clouds are popular, and their use is growing. In fact, a recent Deloitte analysis found industry clouds could become a $640 billion market by 2024. Industry clouds provide tangible benefits to help organizations accelerate innovation and engineer advantage. However, sentiment about industry clouds can vary depending on where an organization is on its digital and business transformation journey....................Continue reading
Deloitte Named a Leader in Worldwide Industry Cloud Professional Services by the IDC MarketScape
October 5, 2022
Deloitte has been recognized as a Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Industry Cloud Professional Services 2022 Vendor Assessment. Deloitte has recently been positioned in the Leaders Category of the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Industry Cloud Professional Services 2022 Vendor Assessment (doc #US48187622, September 2022). The previous version of this report was published in 2019 and also named Deloitte as a Leader...................Continue reading
Observability—taking ‘monitoring’ to the next level
September 16, 2022
As multi-cloud and hybrid cloud architectures become the new norm, many organizations are realizing a need to have a more meaningful way to observe system behavior and react, auto-heal, and optimize system performance. That’s where the emerging discipline of Observability comes in. Observability is the process of monitoring the internal state of complex systems—in real time—with AI and machine learning tools along with logs, tracing, and metrics and inferring performance from the data they gather...................Continue reading
Cloud can help build a more sustainable future
September 9, 2022
Sustainability is top of mind for many companies today, and for good reason. Environmental and cost concerns provide ample impetus for sustainability initiatives. Cloud computing is one key way companies can practice sustainability and still have access to the IT resources they need to innovate, increase customer satisfaction, and grow their market share. How? Cloud computing is more sustainable because resource use is optimized, and cloud providers typically employ green operations practices..................Continue reading
The power and the promise of wearable cognitive assistance
August 31, 2022
Imagine a scenario where an aircraft, loaded with passengers and near takeoff, has to abort because of an uncommon mechanical problem. There’s no expert technician physically available at the airport. The result? Stranded, angry passengers and lost flight revenue..................Continue reading
Cloud leaders embrace mature multi-cloud architectures and strategies
August 26, 2022
Multi-cloud strategies bring together multiple cloud service providers, and multi-cloud has become the prevalent approach to cloud migration among US organizations that have moved to cloud. According to Deloitte’s new US Future of Cloud Survey Report, almost 80% of organizations overall state that they currently deploy a multi-cloud approach. Among all respondents, the top benefits organizations expect to get from multi-cloud investments include more choice, best-of-breed services, application and data scalability, and greater flexibility.................Continue reading
Purposeful—not greater—investments set cloud innovation leaders apart
August 18, 2022
Cloud investments remain on every company’s agenda as global IT spend is projected to reach $4.5 trillion by the end of this year. In a rush to be virtual, many are spending millions, if not billions, on cloud technology to enable analytics and to digitally transform. However, investing in a cloud data center isn’t enough to achieve the many business and technology benefits cloud promises. A strong investment is a critical start, yet spend alone is not what sets apart cloud Leaders—those gaining the most business and innovation value from cloud. Deloitte analyzed survey responses from 500 US cloud decision-makers and identified four categories based on who achieved the greatest strategy and innovation value from their cloud investments. Leaders were the top 29%, Drivers 22%, Moderates 35%, and Hopefuls 14% of respondents. Leaders tend to spend only slightly more on cloud as a normalized percentage of their revenues with 34% of Leaders in the 70th percentile of spenders compared with 28% of Hopefuls. What does make a difference is purposeful investments ................Continue reading
Have an agile mindset? Learn how to rewire your mind for a product mindset
August 10, 2022
Over the past two decades, many organizations have shifted from a waterfall to an agile development approach for planning and delivery of their largest, most critical initiatives. However, a majority of these initiatives continue to be delivered as projects. As they have embraced agile, though, savvy organizations have also transitioned to a product-based mindset that has gained traction over the past few years, due in large part to Mik Kersten’s book, Project to Product. The shift from project to product has enabled many of these companies to deliver better business outcomes.......................Continue reading
Modernize enterprise file transfer systems using AWS Transfer Family
August 4, 2022
Storage management in the cloud can be challenging; many organizations operate in a hybrid cloud environment that presents challenges and complications in areas like file transfer between applications/partners, data sharing, and asset storage. Even if clients are effective in addressing the challenges of engineering the right on-premises solution, there are operational and licensing cost challenges that need to be dealt with throughout the life cycle. With Amazon Web Services (AWS) Transfer Family, you can leverage the power of cloud to set up a sophisticated enterprise file management system.......................Continue reading
Learn how cloud studios are benefiting the media supply chain
July 29, 2022
After the pandemic, more media and entertainment studios are reinvesting in their supply chain and rethinking their approach to creative collaboration. The amount of content produced is growing year over year and shows no signs of slowing down. The world of increased consumer power and hyper-personalization requires content production and delivery in the right form, to the right device, and at the right time. This increase in consumer power requires the ability to create content faster and manage it in a well-organized structure with the option to make it available quickly as needed. Studios can turn to large cloud solutions to improve the media supply chain. .......................Continue reading
DevOps with built-in continuous quality on cloud
July 20, 2022
Continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) have changed the way teams develop, test, and deploy software. However, as competition in the market grows, it is no longer just about application functionality and deployment. Poor quality of software has shown to have a negative impact on an organization.......................Continue reading
What is AWS’s new Cloud WAN, and how will impact Cloud networking?
July 13, 2022
At the AWS New York Summit, Amazon announced general availability for its AWS Cloud WAN services. At Deloitte, we cannot be more excited with the design opportunity this allows. Cloud WAN is a game changer and a welcome addition to our networking toolkit......................Continue reading
What cloud leaders may be missing when measuring tech value
June 28, 2022
Every enterprise is undergoing some form of digitization or digital transformation, and the vast majority aren’t realizing the full value potential. Part of the problem is most organizations don’t have a holistic way to connect, assess, and understand the total value related to tech investments. Leaders need a way to connect the dots, close the gaps, and revisit how big, bold technology investments can drive long-term value.....................Continue reading
Now’s the time to launch a career in cloud computing
June 22, 2022
The pandemic forced many enterprises to accelerate their cloud adoption journey, yet cloud is a very complex, technical endeavor, and its rapid adoption has created a shortage of talent needed to drive the demands of cloud. Conversely, this shortage has created opportunities for students set to enter the workforce, people looking to make a career change, and IT veterans expanding their technical abilities. Regardless of the path, there’s a way to launch an exciting career in cloud....................Continue reading
Establishing ethical guardrails in artificial intelligence
June 15, 2022
As AI and other emerging technology becomes more powerful and the guardrails have yet to be developed, it’s important now more than ever for technologists to consider the implications of what they’re building. This requires continued awareness and dialogue around the importance of ethical AI...................Continue reading
Accelerated adoption to cloud computing: Where are we now?
June 3, 2022
The immediate and urgent demands of the COVID-19 pandemic caused government agencies to accelerate their adoption of cloud to keep critical services running. While some government agencies had previously adopted cloud, those who were not yet cloud-first in their approach to infrastructure were forced to shift priorities. And although these government agencies realized the benefits the cloud had to offer during a pandemic, leaders now face difficult decisions on how to not only sustain the progress they made on their cloud journey during the pandemic but institutionalize it...............................Continue reading
How can government cloud migrators wade through the talent uncertainty?
May 25, 2022
The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated government organizations’ adoption of cloud and facilitated the flexibility and scalability governments needed to meet the urgent challenges of the pandemic. These investments have rapidly introduced the many benefits cloud can offer to government organizations that were once hesitant to leverage cloud, leaving them with the decision of how best to use cloud to accomplish their mission..............................Continue reading
Four tech innovations to enable digital trust today and tomorrow
May 18, 2022
In today’s digital economy, digital trust—the confidence among customers, employees, partners, and other stakeholders in an organization’s ability to create and maintain the integrity of all digital assets—is one of the core four dimensions of Trust that a modern business needs to consider. As technology evolves, so, too, do the threats it enables—putting digital trust at risk. It’s high stakes, and organizations can’t afford to get it wrong. Digital trust can be swiftly lost if customers or other stakeholders feel exposed or mishandled amid a security breach or cyberattack.............................Continue reading
Blockchain and quantum technologies: Driving the future of digital trust
May 12, 2022
Digital trust has increasingly become a necessity in today’s global economy, reliant on ever-increasing connectivity, data use, and new innovative technologies. Embedding trust by ensuring security, confidentiality, and integrity of an organization’s data requires responsible use of technology and prioritizing cybersecurity. However, choosing the right tools can be challenging due to rapid technological innovation and the large number of available options. To help businesses make smart choices when it comes to improving digital trust, Deloitte’s research explores how these advanced solutions can help organizations meet their unique digital trust needs with a focus on tomorrow’s next horizon: digital infrastructures.............................Continue reading
Transitioning to a product-centric organization?
April 21, 2022
Organizations are finding themselves in the midst of continuously evolving customer needs, and the release cycle of products, features and services are shrinking to keep up with these demands. It is in the hands of leaders to agree on the type of company they want to lead: customer focused, product leading, geographically organized, function centric, process driven or syndicated. Majority of companies are embracing the product-centric operating model to improve responsiveness and help accomplish business outcomes. But to realize the model’s benefits, companies must be willing to adopt a more agile mindset............................................... Continue reading
Modernizing your mainframe: Migrate to cloud
April 18, 2022
Cloud technologies have been revolutionizing industries for quite some time now. Though the idea of finally migrating your mainframe to the cloud can be daunting, it has become crucial for businesses to run seamlessly....................................................... Continue reading
Five digital trust takeaways for the cloud data leader
April 11, 2022
While the threats to digital trust are well known to leaders, most still grapple with finding the best solution to address today’s needs. As companies continue to embrace a hybrid digital workplace model and digital attack vectors increase, it’s increasingly important for data to be protected as a greater number of unencrypted home networks now have access to company data. To take a pulse on how organizations can utilize cloud innovation and security as an essential technology to an organization’s digital trust strategy, we sat down with Deloitte’s Chief Cloud Strategy Officer, David Linthicum and asked what he’d suggest for a CEO thinking about digital trust of data and information and advanced technology solutions..................................Continue reading
Exploring cloud journey with strategic thinking and adaptable technology
March 29, 2022
The journey to cloud has accelerated in the past two years. As businesses digitally transform and move toward Agile with pod-based teams, it is crucial to focus on strategy-driven models that leverage technology as a force multiplier. Organizations developing long-term digital strategies need to ask business-driven questions, refer to a common language that transcends functions, and engage transformation accelerators to quickly progress digital transformation to thrive and drive value..................................Continue reading
From talent to agility: Can cloud technology win on multiple fronts?
March 23, 2022
As more organizations foster a digital-first approach, cloud-native ecosystems expand and mature. It’s certain that the way forward is to build cost-effective, optimized, and automated architectures that are monitored by people with the right cloud-native skill sets.................................Continue reading
Four tips to build a sound cloud architecture
March 10, 2022
The power of cloud provides almost limitless possibilities to help organizations respond to rapidly-changing business environments. However, cloud doesn’t just happen. A reliable, well-constructed cloud architecture is essential to a successful cloud deployment, and it can help organizations glean more value from their cloud investments. Therefore, it’s crucial to get the architecture right. Here are four key tips for cloud architecture success................................Continue reading
Making room for a greener world
March 3, 2022
Data has often been heralded as the new oil. At the center of global trade lies the power of data. The global economy consumes and produces large quantities of data. Some major shifts in data consumption can be traced to how we lead our lives. We have evolved from watching movies on DVDs to streaming them on digital platforms; today, we drive cars that are equipped with software, capturing a huge amount of data. Even physical purchases come tagged with digital enablers that track shopping patterns and audience personas—transforming businesses and shopping experiences alike................................Continue reading
CloudOps: A new approach to cloud management
February 24, 2022
How can enterprises get more value from their cloud investments? By rethinking and reinventing their operating models and talent mix, and by implementing new tools, such as AIOps, to better manage ever-increasing cloud complexity. That’s where the new discipline of CloudOps comes in. In short, when organizations practice CloudOps, they use automation, tools, and cloud-centric operational processes to optimize the maintenance of their cloud ecosystem. Long term, CloudOps can enable organizations to become more proactive and efficient, and to achieve better business outcomes................................Continue reading
Industry clouds and the future of the restaurant industry
February 17, 2022
New research from Deloitte estimates that industry clouds could help to accelerate digital development for as much as 64% of the US$1 trillion cloud market—a $640 billion potential market. We’ve discussed why and how organizations can take advantage of the industry cloud opportunity in our recent post, “The industry cloud opportunity,” but let’s delve deeper to look at industry clouds in action specific to the restaurant industry...............................Continue reading
The industry cloud opportunity
February 10, 2022
What do a 100-year-old organization and a digital native have in common? Both can have insufficient digital processes in place and are constantly needing to innovate, grow, change, and adapt. Organizations today, irrespective of their legacy, need 21st-century digital blueprints—whether they are replacing traditional technology or creating a new solution. They need modular capabilities and architectures to slowly shift from the monolithic systems of the past and to empower them to change more flexibly and incrementally.................................Continue reading
Deloitte Consulting acquires Dextra Technologies
February 3, 2022
Deloitte Consulting has acquired substantially all of the assets of Dextra Technologies, a leading product engineering services and embedded software firm. This acquisition of the Dextra Technologies business extends Deloitte Consulting’s offerings to accelerate the digital transformation from standalone products into smart connected platforms and greatly expands the organization’s product and software engineering capabilities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed................................Continue reading
Embrace machine learning to power your apps
January 13, 2022
Designing, building, and deploying custom enterprise applications are key to tailoring and digitizing business processes. Distributed systems and the cloud era have ushered in widespread DevOps practices to enable better use of application build and deployments. Cloud-native technologies and applications accelerate deployment velocity significantly. With easier access to machine learning (ML), in all public clouds, we are now on the cusp of another transformation................................Continue reading
De-risk digital transformation in three horizons with SAP on Google Cloud
January 6, 2022
Cloud is a dynamic environment that can enhance an organization’s security posture, as it provides both proximity to data and the native tools to move things faster and keep them secure. However, organizations rapidly adopting new solutions from cloud hyperscalers are often unaware of the scope, opportunities, and limitations of cloud security....................................Continue reading
De-risk digital transformation in three horizons with SAP on Google Cloud
December 16, 2021
Digital transformation is moving at a rapid pace, fueled by a global pandemic and unexpected social, economic, and even geographical disruption. Meanwhile, rising customer expectations demand a more agile, proactive data-driven approach to transform standard business operations...................................Continue reading
Ability to win and capacity to change to survive and thrive
December 13, 2021
In our recent Deloitte Insights research, “A new language for digital transformation,” we assert that digital is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It involves understanding change across the industry and organization as well as how to harness that change for competitive advantage—and, most critically, how to enable that advantage with technology to win..................................Continue reading
Cloud and consumer products: Navigating uncertain times
December 2, 2021
COVID-19 has had sweeping impacts on how we live, work, and shop. It has changed the retail landscape and experience, both as a disruption to business as usual and an amplifier of deep-set forces that pre-date the pandemic and have no sign of abating. The result is a more competitive environment where retailer responsiveness increasingly predicts success.................................Continue reading
Shopping around: Cloud and post-pandemic retail
November 22, 2021
COVID-19 has had sweeping impacts on how we live, work, and shop. It has changed the retail landscape and experience, both as a disruption to business-as-usual and an amplifier of deep-set forces that predate the pandemic and have no sign of abating. The result is a more competitive environment where retailer responsiveness increasingly predicts success................................Continue reading
Is distributed cloud computing the future of cloud computing?
November 11, 2021
Distributed cloud computing is a public cloud service that does computing and storage on various networks (on-premises, in other cloud providers’ data centers, or in third-party data centers or co-location centers) but manages everything from a single control plane. In simpler terms, the distributed cloud enables a geographically distributed, centrally managed distribution of public cloud services optimized for performance, compliance, and edge computing...............................Continue reading
Cloud strategy: Agility, complexity, and business-aligned
November 4, 2021
While organizations were adopting cloud technologies prior to the pandemic, in 2020 much of the world went virtual showing a huge growth in cloud. This continued in 2021 and shows no signs of stopping. For organizations to gain the most strategic value from their cloud adoption journey, they can benefit from understanding what cloud strategy fundamentals are today, where organizations are moving to reduce cloud complexity, and how to use a common language to align strategy and technology. Done right, organizations can better enable their capacity to change and ability to win..............................Continue reading
Putting the power of a cloud-enabled workforce to work
October 21, 2021
Organizations across industries and borders are leveraging the power of cloud, AI, and analytics to innovate, scale their business, and gain insights into customers and operations. At the same time, they have learned that focusing solely on technology and applications is not enough to realize the return on investment (ROI) they want from migrating to cloud. ..............................Continue reading
Cloud strategy and the future of work
October 11, 2021
Organizations across every industry are navigating monumental disruption, whether that’s addressing ethical issues such as climate change and ESG, navigating how to build and cultivate trust, rearchitecting the future of work, or “digitally transforming” as part of their digital workplace journey................................Continue reading
Why most digital transformations get lost in translation
September 30, 2021
While many organizations have developed digital strategies, they struggle to truly transform in a way that is aligned with their organization’s strategic ambitions and demonstrates clear impact. Digital transformation is about more than user experience (which can be thought of as cosmetic surgery) and requires core transformation (which can be more like open-heart surgery) to create the systems transformation needed to enable the adaptive organization........................Continue reading
AI/ML complemented by cloud makes automation faster and easier
September 16, 2021
The ability for AI to improve customer service continues to gain traction in the market. In fact, automating call-center interactions by replacing human-to-human interaction with human-to-machine interaction has the potential to establish better customer relations and increased trustworthiness........................Continue reading
Cloud ERP-as-a-service driving innovation and value
September 2, 2021
For Kinetic Enterprises™, enterprise resource planning (ERP) isn’t just another tool to be plugged into the corporate network or simple management software for routine business activities. Rather, it is the enabling digital foundation that, if leveraged correctly, enables them to capture the benefits of momentum and change..........................Continue reading
Maximizing AWS compute savings while minimizing risk
August 19, 2021
Organizations using Amazon Web Services (AWS) often debate when choosing Savings Plans or Reserved Instances to optimize EC2 compute spend. While Savings Plans are flexible to use, RIs are powerful, with the exchange features. Learn more about how to maximize AWS compute savings while minimizing risk.........................Continue reading
What cloud makes possible, Deloitte makes actual
August 16, 2021
Deloitte is recognized in the Leaders quadrant in the 2021 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Public Cloud IT Transformation Services, placed highest on Ability to Execute and Furthest on Completeness of Vision...............................Continue reading
Building trust (and results) with customer-centric capabilities and cloud-enabled insights
August 5, 2021
The need to effectively and meaningfully connect with customers through digital channels has never been greater. Insurance customers today expect “one-click,” transactional capabilities just like the ones they enjoy elsewhere in their everyday digital lives.................................Continue reading
Cloud innovation: Becoming an AI-fueled entrepreneur
July 29, 2021
In Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise, 3rd Edition, 83% of respondents said artificial intelligence (AI) will be very or critically important to their organization’s success in the next two years. Taking an AI-everything strategy that spans internal operations and external customer experiences requires a high level of data maturity and machine learning (ML) capability across organizations, and many are looking to cloud ML infrastructures to support these types of programs................................Continue reading
Cloud innovation: Becoming a proactive data defender
July 22, 2021
Deloitte’s research, “An integrated approach to your cloud migration strategy,” found 70% of surveyed organizations with a mature cloud and cyber strategy report doing well or very well in using advanced technologies to predict potential future risks and threats. Undoubtedly, artificial intelligence (AI) has an important role to play in enabling proactive cloud and cybersecurity strategies with advanced predictive capabilities across business, workforce, and customer operations...............................Continue reading
People and process in cloud
July 15, 2021
You made a move to the cloud because it brings the power to transform the way you do business. However, the cloud also forces you to solve your organization’s requirements through the lens of your cloud vendor’s capabilities and consume innovation at faster pace. Therefore, with the cloud, it is essential to develop a world-class sustainment model to manage the needs of your organization vis-à-vis the capabilities you bought...............................Continue reading
Cloud innovation: Becoming an experience innovator
June 30, 2021
According to Deloitte’s "2021 Global Marketing Trends", 57% of respondents said their organizations significantly altered digital platforms to better meet customer needs in response to the pandemic. And indeed, customers have come to expect increasingly on-demand, personalized, and memorable experiences as table stakes, no matter the industry or interaction. This has placed pressure on organizations to create customer-first strategies that use cloud to power a range of innovative customer experiences enabled by the chief marketing officer (CMO), chief experience officer, and product innovation teams—and, of course, the cloud itself..............................Continue reading
A scientific approach with AI/ML modeling to improve planograms in the retail and consumer products industry
June 24, 2021
A planogram is a model that specifies exactly how much product should be displayed on store shelves to maximize sales and enhance the customer experience. Traditionally, the retail and consumer product industries relied heavily on their past statistics for forecasting and used heuristic methods and human judgement to perform a planogram product assortment, resulting in lost sales due to out-of-stock product(s), generating greater waste due to decayed product(s), and entailing high service levels in stocking up merchandize. Retail and consumer product companies have begun to realize that the traditional approach has its limitations and needs to be reimagined in a rapidly evolving and highly competitive market. That said, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have begun to play a critical role in the planogram assortment by helping to rank and recommend products to maximize sales..............................Continue reading
Cloud innovation: Becoming a reactive responder
June 17, 2021
According to Deloitte’s annual "2021 Resilience study", 70% of CxOs surveyed don’t have confidence in their organization’s ability to pivot and adapt to disruptive events. In a world of constant and inevitable change, the most resilient organizations are prepared, adaptable, collaborative, trustworthy, and responsible. However, being able to pivot quickly while maintaining these characteristics requires having the right business operations, technology infrastructure, and workforce strategy in place to easily adjust, automate, and streamline work processes wherever possible.................................Continue reading
Four business scenarios for cloud innovation
June 10, 2021
In an environment where organizations constantly need to innovate, evolve, and change, digital enterprises have proven their capacity to drive financial value and competitive advantage. While many technologies will be part of a company’s digital strategy, the cloud will almost certainly be one of them................................Continue reading
ML-Oops to MLOps
June 3, 2021
As artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and cloud technologies evolve, they are becoming more ubiquitous and affecting market microstructures. Massive proliferation of data, rapid advancements in data storage and computational availability, and the rise of auto-ML have accelerated AI and ML adoption to inform business decisions...............................Continue reading
The compounded benefits of cloud and machine learning
May 27, 2021
The analytical capabilities of machine learning (ML) combined with the scalability of cloud computing provide a powerful duo to achieve truly transformational changes. Learn more about how organizations with a cloud ML strategy see improved enterprise adoption, bigger budgets, and thus better return on investment...............................Continue reading
Key questions banks should ask before adopting AI/ML
May 17, 2021
Either due to changing customer needs, fluctuating regulatory and compliance standards, or peer pressure (or to remain relevant amid unprecedented pandemic times), banks have begun to realize the importance of adopting AI/ML. Learn more about the important steps banks should consider before implementing AI technologies on a larger scale........................... Continue reading
Road to production-grade serverless applications
May 10, 2021
There is a significant breadth of knowledge about what serverless is and how to get started. However, it is the depth that is often overlooked, in terms of what it takes to create production-grade serverless solutions. Gary Arora, chief architect, Cloud, hosted a webinar on “Advanced Serverless for Production-Grade Workloads.” The specific session was a mix of slides and hands-on demos to show what it takes to make serverless applications production-ready, with end-to-end automation, real-time observability, and local development capabilities.......................... Continue reading
Four prominent trends in the API and integration market
April 29, 2021
As a leading systems integrator for top-tier clients, we are in a unique position to observe trends that are shaping the application programming interface (API) and integration market today and influencing its future. In this blog, we present the top trends valued by clients as they move toward realizing their API and integration strategy and evolve their enterprise API and integration platform capabilities to scale to the demands of the future...................................... Continue reading
Core revival: A new road map for your core modernization journey
April 22, 2021
In the face of uncertainty, a business’s ability to evolve through operational and strategic agility should not be undermined. As companies move towards unleashing their full digital potential, it is important for their legacy core systems to support agility, innovation, and new modes of working. Redefining core capabilities requires a new way of thinking, and to make the transition to the cloud more cost-neutral and operationally manageable, CIOs are exploring several ways to do so....................Continue reading
Cloud Misconfiguration
April 15, 2021
Many organizations globally are migrating from legacy on-premises infrastructure to the cloud with the objective of increasing business agility and resilience, but some have failed to realize the benefits that modernization provides: an opportunity to also improve their cybersecurity posture. Migrating to the cloud has the potential to reduce existing on-premises infrastructure security risks through built-in encryption, logging, private networking, monitoring, DDoS protection, automated patches, and other elements, as well as enable application security..................Continue reading
Integrating cloud-native architecture with innovation core
April 8, 2021
Most organizations agree on the value that cloud brings; however, a misconception remains that simply lifting and shifting workloads to the cloud will provide a quick return on investments. To fully realize the value of cloud, companies need to consider an innovation-focused strategy enabled by a cloud-native approach................Continue reading
Evaluating the capabilities of containerized solutions using IBM Spectrum Scale and Protect Plus
March 25 2021
The era of large-scale digital transformation has made organizations embrace trends like hybrid cloud environments, cloud portability, and containerization. With an increasing rate of cloud adoption, using the fundamentals of DevSecOps to meet various IT challenges is the most feasible solution for them. By breaking the traditional silos between the development, security, and operations teams, DevSecOps automation lets IT companies adopt containerization with a diversified cloud migration strategy. This approach builds a hybrid cloud environment and includes tools to expedite and enhance cloud storage.................Continue reading
Building boundaryless cloud edge solutions
March 18 2021
In order to guide organizations on how to harness the full potential of modern-day computing, we spoke with edge computing pioneer Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya), the Carnegie Group University professor of computer science and Deloitte Cloud Institute fellow. For our exclusive interview and detailed perspective, watch for our Deloitte Insights article, “The Edge of cloud: A discussion with Mahadev Satyanarayanan, the Carnegie Group University Professor of Computer Science,” which publishes on March 25................Continue reading
Technology for social impact
March 12 2021
As organizations face increased global pressure to be social enterprises—with values and programs that align with their workforce’s social impact agendas—technology can help drive this agenda forward. Cloud technology, when combined with other network and computing technologies like 5G, the edge, satellite, IoT devices, and others, can help unlock that potential............Continue reading
Processes make the cloud go round
March 4, 2021
In my last blog, I talked about how, in addition to technology, people and process were really key ingredients of cloud adoption. My mantra is, “Technology is easy; people are hard.” That extends to process too. Cloud technology is much easier to get a handle on than are the people and processes that orchestrate how work gets done. In this blog, I’ll examine how process affects cloud transformations............Continue reading
Differentiating your cloud migration with a cyber-forward cloud strategy
February 25, 2021
Businesses have seen increased pressure from customers and their workforces to be more agile, responsive, and personalized with the experiences they provide. However, monolithic legacy infrastructures may have stood in the way of delivering flexible, scalable, and valuable business solutions. IT modernization programs have mostly focused on employing more flexible IT architectures, including microservices, containerization, open application programming interfaces (APIs), and cloud.
Cloud migration will likely be an integral component of the IT modernization road map and an intentional “security by design” approach that infuses cyber-first thinking into the operating model can be a competitive differentiator for organizations looking to achieve business resilience, enhanced security, and improved customer trust (see figure 1)...........Continue reading
Balancing safety with privacy
February 19, 2021
Even as pandemic lockdowns ease in some places around the globe, most companies are still operating with a radically altered work model, with a mix of onsite and remote employees. Some workers choose to stay home, but many workers don’t have that choice—they are essential or hands-on workers whose jobs depend on their physical presence. The risk management hazards in this environment are great, and every organization is tasked with navigating a series of complex choices to address imperatives like worker health and safety, privacy, and regulatory and legal requirements.
Leadership will need to develop comprehensive strategies, especially with regard to worker safety and contact tracing to address these imperatives holistically. These strategies should combine a human-centric approach with technology to ensure that their workers are safe and healthy and that their privacy is protected, no matter their job or location..........Continue reading
It’s (mostly) not the tech, it’s the people
February 12, 2021
People are the most important part of your cloud journey. Getting the right combination of people and teams is critical to success.
Tech is easy; people are hard. I’ve said that often enough that it’s become a mantra. The majority of blockers that slow down cloud adoption are not technology-related, but rather people- and process-related. Now, that’s not to say that building software in the cloud is easy; it’s not. However, I’ve seen so many companies really struggle more with what I think is the most difficult part of cloud adoption—getting the right combination of people and teams to run the thing and make sure it works as.........Continue reading
Transforming the tax function with cloud
February 4, 2021
It’s no longer a question of whether organizations should transition to cloud-based applications, but when and how. And, as most organizations move at least a portion of their application portfolios to cloud—especially their ERP systems—there is great value for tax in cloud.
With ERP systems that are implemented out of the box, the information tax needs to perform its various processes may not be present—or not present in the ideal form. So, tax must manually gather and manipulate the information it needs for analysis and reporting, which can be time-consuming and fraught with the potential for error. A cloud-ERP implementation gives tax the opportunity to address these.........Continue reading
Own your cloud journey—through a cloud transformation management office
January 28, 2021
As organizations are increasingly adopting cloud to support business growth and deliver new digital solutions for their employees and customers, a cloud transformation management office (CTMO) can provide the governance and management structure to guide the transformation and journey to the cloud.
Today, organizations are increasingly adopting cloud to support business growth and deliver new digital solutions for their employees and customers. However, maximizing the value from an investment in cloud often requires an organization to shift its operating model and transform its technology service delivery. To ensure an organization’s goals are top of mind throughout the process, it is beneficial to establish a cloud transformation management office (CTMO), a governance and management structure to guide the transformation and prepare the organization for the journey to.........Continue reading
Deloitte Consulting completes acquisition of HashedIn Technologies
January 21, 2021
This acquisition will expand cloud and AI capabilities and strengthen Deloitte’s position as a worldwide leader in cloud services.
Deloitte Consulting LLP has completed its acquisition of HashedIn Technologies Private Limited, a leading cloud native software engineering and product development firm. Together, the two organizations will help clients to imagine, deliver, and run their futures with cloud technologies.Deloitte entities have made 14 acquisitions of cloud-technology firms or their businesses since 2017, including software-modernization company innoWake, cloud-management platform startup ATADATA, and technology consultancy Keytree, demonstrating a commitment to strategic investments that advance business disruption. Today, Deloitte has over 50,000 professionals worldwide supporting organizations throughout their cloud.........Continue reading
Regional banking technology and cloud adoption
January 19, 2021
Regional banks play a vital role in the US financial ecosystem. But these days, they’re playing from behind—at least when it comes to their IT infrastructure. For these banks, modernizing onto cloud-based platforms is an important technology solution that can help level the playing field. How can regional banking institutions evolve their technology to compete with industry heavyweights?.........Continue reading
Three cloud ML approaches for enterprise AI strategy
January 7, 2021
Learn more about the opportunity that cloud machine learning brings to artificial intelligence programs.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are helping global organizations solve numerous business challenges, ranging from operational efficiency and risk management to customer experience and more. And, while ML is powerful in its own right, when combined with cloud technologies, it allows organizations to better innovate at speed and.........Continue reading
AWS re:Invent 2020–Machine Learning keynote recap
December 17, 2020
The pace and quality of innovation in the area of Machine Learning is amazing, which tells us that we are at a very early stage of business transformations that ML can bring to our clients. Federated learning and privacy-preserving machine learning are two areas to watch very closely. With this dedicated keynote on Machine Learning products, solutions, and services, AWS is poised to capture a large share of the market.
Swami opened this year’s Machine Learning keynote, highlighting the accelerated customer base adopting Machine learning, with over 1,000 customers using AWS’ Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) services. He elaborated on how ML has moved from being a niche area to the core of many businesses, illustrating success stories for AWS customers like Dominos leveraging ML to meet its goal of 10 minutes or less for pizza delivery, Roche accelerating medical experiences, BMW processing 7PB of data with SageMaker, Nike using ML for product recommendations, and Formula 1 analyzing over 550M data points on car design and simulations to speed up design and.........Continue reading
Put people first, and the rest will follow: Tips for building a highly effective engineering team
December 10, 2020
As companies embark on ambitious cloud-native transformations, leveraging bleeding-edge technologies that push products and engineers alike to their limits, it’s key to focus on building highly effective engineering teams.
Critical milestones are often jeopardized by a new requirement, some indecision or oversight, or a technical barrier throwing the project into flux. In looking to develop a way to reduce and respond to these challenges, it’s essential to build an environment where people are treated as individuals, effective leadership is in place early on, and the ongoing technical constraints are constantly being.........Continue reading
Five recommendations to enable next-generation R&D in the cloud
December 3, 2020
COVID-19 has forced organizations to rethink existing R&D strategies.
The pandemic has forced organizations to innovate products and services and to rethink existing R&D strategies. Organizations have had to look for new ways to share information with privacy in mind and collaborate globally—at unprecedented speed. While this change is happening across almost every industry, the stakes have been particularly high in the life sciences and health care industries. Organizations have needed to quickly advance public, private, and academic partnerships in order to manage everything from contact tracing to the search for therapeutics and a vaccine to support.........Continue reading
Maximizing value from cloud investments
December 1, 2020
Optimizing tech spend with effective cloud migration strategies, cloud spend optimization, and ongoing cloud spend governance.
As CIOs shift their focus from responding to the COVID-19 crisis to recovering and thriving (with the goal of becoming better prepared to function in the “new normal”), tech spend optimization will be high on their agenda. They may have good reason to tighten their belts. A recent Forrester report predicts a 50% chance of US and global tech markets shrinking by 2% or more yearly in the event of a deep recession. Many companies are already cutting costs in anticipation of lean times, as indicated by an IDC report that reveals a 5.1% expected reduction in global IT spend for.........Continue reading
DevOps in a distributed world and new ways of working
November 19, 2020
This blog post is the latest in a four-part series on our thinking about the future of a cloud-enabled work infrastructure and how COVID-19 has been an accelerator for organizations planning to scale up their cloud infrastructure.
Organizations implementing a cloud strategy to support the future of work can face challenges in managing IT complexity, security risk, and operational efficiency. This blog will highlight the role of DevOps in managing cloud operations and its ability to bring development teams and other IT stakeholders together to deliver a higher-quality product faster, at a regular cadence, and in a collaborative.........Continue reading
Federated security for the future of work, workforce, and workplace
November 13, 2020
COVID-19 has created tectonic shifts in how and where we work. The ratio of full-time employees working remotely versus from the physical workplace has almost flipped in a matter of a few months—from merely 3 percent of employees working from home in January to more than 80 percent in May. While remote working helped to ensure business continuity and to maintain social distancing, it hurled previously unseen security challenges to internal IT.........Continue reading
Executing migrations to AWS Outposts with ATAMotion
November 11, 2020
AWS Outposts allows enterprise customers to fully realize the capabilities of the AWS cloud in their own data centers, offering a true hybrid deployment. Deloitte, an AWS Premier Partner, offers the ATADATA ATASphere platform to migrate on-premise workloads to AWS Outposts with.........Continue reading
Cloud complexity compounds with a new paradigm for remote work infrastructure
November 5, 2020
While cloud is the solution many organizations are pursuing to address their remote work infrastructure needs, the journey to the cloud is not always an easy one. There is a certain level of complexity that goes with cloud migration. This complexity is only compounded by the new challenges organizations are experiencing in a distributed work.........Continue reading
Cloud or mainframe? We asked. Most are taking a third path
October 29, 2020
It’s human nature to define ourselves by our choices, and the world of technology is no exception. In fact, maybe it’s the rule in technology: Thou must have an opinion on every software, hardware, and strategy choice. Staking out your territory also has a practical advantage: In an environment in which we have more choices available to us than we could possibly sort through, choosing a technology “side” automatically eliminates a lot of time-consuming choices. To use a simple example, once we choose a smartphone, we don’t have to keep track of what’s new with competing devices designed for other.........Continue reading
Unbundling the cloud with the intelligent edge
October 22, 2020
The promise of the fourth industrial revolution offers a compelling vision of connected manufacturing systems that can sense, analyze, and respond to physical conditions. Animated by advancing digital technologies, similar visions have conjured the future of intelligent buildings, hospital systems, farms, and.........Continue reading
How much is cloud complexity costing you?
October 15, 2020
There is a lot of research indicating how the use of multicloud architectures within enterprises is growing. Indeed, a lot of companies are already multicloud, and this architecture is becoming a deliberate choice. It is well understood that movement toward multiple clouds (and the hybrid cloud) is even a logical evolution, and one that is likely to drive us into the .........Continue reading
Building a cloud-enabled work infrastructure
October 8, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the economy, no doubt, but it has provided opportunities for companies to modernize their business infrastructure (in some cases just to survive), and therefore, accelerate their cloud adoption. That accelerated adoption is underway. Cloud spending increased by 11 percent in Q2 2020 over the same period last year. Companies that move quickly to follow the cloud-adoption trend will have the opportunity to rethink how they operate—and to reshape their business to use cloud as a competitive.........Continue reading
Clearing skies: Demystifying the transition to the cloud for tax
October 4, 2020
In recent years, cloud(s) have been gathering on the horizon for many organizations—both global, multinational organizations and smaller, agile organizations. These clouds represent sweeping changes for most organizations that may bring major disruptions and may require corporate tax executives to make career decisions.........Continue reading
Resiliency issues? Cloud and culture can help solve them
September 17, 2020
The current pandemic has disrupted almost every facet of operations for many organizations. It has changed the way they think about, organize, and carry out their business, and it has required them to become more resilient than ever. There are two keys to resiliency: cloud and culture. By leveraging the power of cloud to decouple people and processes from location—and to boost their information security—organizations can build resiliency into their operations. By changing their culture to foster communication and collaboration, companies can build resiliency into their........Continue reading
@Scale machine learning–distributed training concepts
September 4, 2020
What happens if the business problem we are trying to solve for requires a large machine learning model or large amount of training data that won’t fit into the memory of a single server? What if the computation needs are impossible for a single processor to support?
In real-life machine learning applications, the datasets used for training models can range from multiple terabyte to even petabytes. For example, if we want to analyze datasets from a social network with 100 million users and 1KB data per user, we are dealing with a 100TB........Continue reading
Broadcasting in the cloud
August 28, 2020
Cloud has radically transformed the operating models of organizations across industries, providing the flexibility, agility, and scalability that’s needed to quickly adapt to changing demands, innovate, and bring new offerings to market faster. In the broadcast industry, cloud has also enabled organizations to embrace AI and machine learning and operate with the elasticity and scalability that was not previously........Continue reading
TechCrunch
August 5, 2020
The way we work has changed in an instant. In the past few months, we’ve all experienced it. Technological advancement and social transformations arrive swiftly and sometimes unexpectedly—making cloud savviness all the more crucial to business success. “I’ve been working in technology for 35 years,” said Myke Miller, Dean of Deloitte’s Cloud Institute, a curriculum devoted to sharpening participants’ cloud skills and business acumen. “This shift with the cloud is unlike anything else we’ve ........Continue reading
Building high performance data pipelines to train machine learning models
July 31, 2020
Considering building a data ingestion and preprocessing pipeline to train a machine learning model? Did you know that there are specific design considerations that we need to think about when we are building a data pipeline to train a Machine Learning model? Supervised machine learning (ML) models need to be trained with labeled datasets before the models can be used for inference........Continue reading
Learning to hear each customer’s true voice
July 24, 2020
Your agents listen to your customers when they call your contact center, but how can you hear them too? How can you truly understand what customers need and how to help them? Do you really know why customers are calling, what makes them happy, or what’s really driving their complaints?
It’s not just what your customers say, but how they say it that matters. Agents get this. They hear not only the customer’s words but also the sighs, pauses and intonation and, hence, understand the real meaning. But how can you do the same without listening to every call.......Continue reading
All together now: Platforms can consolidate the best of developer, business, and risk experience
July 17, 2020
What do developers really want? They want to write code. They take pride in knowing they “built that,” and find immense satisfaction in seeing their code efficiently perform a task.
Just as important: They love being part of a community—a place where they can share their accomplishments and skills, communicating with and learning from others. But once developers work in an enterprise development setting, many find that the things they love about coding move further out of.......Continue reading
Respond, recover, and thrive
June 26, 2020
While the current COVID-19 pandemic has brought heartache to many—and misfortune to many businesses—there are nevertheless lessons for the business community to apply to its response and recovery. For those business leaders struggling to make sense of what’s happening to their organizations and how to quell the damage—it’s not too late to start making plans to facilitate your enterprise’s move forward into a full recovery, all while vastly improving your IT operations.
There are four steps you can take today to help weather the next crisis. The success you have in completing those steps will go a long way in helping you survive and thrive post-crisis.......Continue reading
Gain deeper insights and fuel innovation with cloud AI/ML
June 17, 2020
Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly getting embedded in the core of information technology, and it’s only getting more pervasive. In fact, Gartner recently calculated that in 2021 AI augmentation will create $2.9 trillion of business value and save 6.2 billion man-hours globally.1 Leveraging AI/ML in the cloud can give your organization access to the computing resources and power you need to derive deeper insights, drive innovation, and make your operations more efficient than ever before—and do it.......Continue reading
Getting to the future of gaming with cloud
June 11, 2020
The global video-gaming industry is huge, at an estimated $149 billion, and it’s growing at 10 percent annually. However, the industry is undergoing a seismic shift. Recently, cloud gaming—where both games and data are completely cloud based and games stream to and from devices—has been slowly gaining market share. This nascent world of cloud gaming presents many opportunities for both gaming companies and gamers, but it’s also fraught with complexity. Will the payoff be worth the.......Continue reading
Is the future of work remote?
May 29, 2020
Developing a successful virtual engagement framework.
To a growing percentage of workers, work is an activity, not a place. The unprecedented nature of COVID-19 has accelerated this trend and forced many companies to adopt a virtual, remote work model to keep business moving. Many organizations are looking to their leadership to build a virtual engagement framework that defines the future of work. But establishing an effective framework may also mean shedding conventions that can hinder.......Continue reading
IT renewal delivers value for FedEx
April 30, 2020
A service-oriented, cloud-based technology modernization initiative is boosting innovation and helping the company rapidly adapt to business and market changes.
For nearly half a century, technology has underpinned critical business and logistics operations on which FedEx customers depend. Almost a decade ago, we committed to an expansive technology renewal initiative based on an ongoing vision for cloud and everything-as-a-service. We began a journey to simplify and modernize our monolithic legacy systems by creating a collection of orchestrated microservices.......Continue reading
Cloud and AI innovation in operations
April 9, 2020
Can AI-enabled processes and a product-centric model help Ops keep pace with transformation?
The pace of innovation is moving at a speed never seen before. IT leaders are challenged to spend less while being asked to implement new technologies and concepts like cloud, DevOps, machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI), IoT and many others. To keep up with the pace of change, organizations must transform the way they.......Continue reading
New accounting rules can bolster cloud’s appeal
March 26, 2020
The standards governing accounting for cloud implementation costs are shifting, often with significant benefits for organizations that adopt the technology.
Many organizations around the globe have embraced cloud computing for benefits including agility, cost savings, and increased innovation. Until recently, however, accounting rules had not really caught up, offering little guidance to help companies allocate cloud costs between deferred and current-period operational.......Continue reading
California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) and cloud computing
March 17, 2020
Will the latest regulations change how you work with your cloud provider?
The California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA) took effect on January 1 with the purpose of securing new privacy rights for California consumers. Businesses are subject to the CCPA if one or more of the following are.......Continue reading
Transforming transformation
March 12, 2020
Technology is not the answer for cloud ROI.
I recently wrote a post titled Transforming the transformation: Digital transformation as core strategy, where I talked about how transformation won’t be able to provide the returns you’re expecting unless it’s integrated into the culture of the business. In this post, I’m going to dive a little deeper into that premise and look at the components of digital transformation and how they’re inextricably linked. In my mind, no single component equals success. Unless you have the right synthesis of technology, process, and people, nothing you do will provide the ROI you.......Continue reading
An interview with Bob Hersch
March 5, 2020
David Linthicum sits down with the Azure practice leader and cloud infrastructure and engineering leader for Deloitte Consulting LLP.
I recently sat down with Bob Hersch to talk about certain aspects of Deloitte’s Azure capabilities, including private cloud and IoT deployments. Bob is a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP and leads Deloitte’s Azure practice, where he's responsible for advancing the strategy offerings and overall capabilities of Deloitte's cloud business. He also leads the Infrastructure and Engineering service capabilities group at Deloitte. I was eager to hear from Bob how Azure is being used by large enterprises to support their cloud journey.
Bob did note at the beginning of our discussion that Microsoft is an audit client of Deloitte, and as such, Deloitte can’t be a partner nor have an alliance with Azure. There are a number of other independence considerations that apply as well. For example, we cannot market or advocate for them and vice-versa, we don’t sell together or develop joint solutions to take to market. But of course, we can and we do provide services that relate to the implementation of Azure and other Microsoft products to our clients and we can talk about Deloitte’s capabilities and credentials to provide Azure related services to.......Continue reading
Transforming the transformation—Digital transformation as core strategy
February 26, 2020
Can a 24/7 transformation culture improve your organization?
Digital transformation can be, well, transformative, but I’m hearing rumblings from some people I talk with that their digital transformation initiatives aren’t living up to their promise. They talk to me about budget overruns, unmet expectations, and technology integration problems. There’s an old saying that goes, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” It applies perfectly to digital.......Continue reading
Tackle cloud complexity
February 14, 2020
Returning to positive ROI by taking a proactive approach to complexity management.
When cloud computing took off in 2007, the migration was a gold rush, as companies raced to launch quick fix solutions in hope of transforming their companies. As the year 2020 begins, cloud computing projects are in their second or third generation. Instead of offering the promised ROI, some projects are racking up sky-high operational costs, impeding efficiency, and stifling productivity. That’s in addition to potential system outages, security breaches, and customer issues with stoppages and delays that keep developers and architects up at .......Continue reading
DevOps and the next bottleneck: Architecture
February 6, 2020
When the focus is focus on outcomes and business value, what’s next on the DevOps journey?
If you have read any of my articles over the years you will know that I subscribe to the definitions of DevOps that focus on outcomes and business value, not the definitions that focus on tools and engineers. Having said that, I have frequently written that DevOps is about continuous learning and improvement and removing bottlenecks from the software development .......Continue reading
Accelerate your possible with source code analytics
January 29, 2020
How can your organization quickly assess the cloud-readiness of legacy applications and make a decision on cost-to-benefit for migration?
Even as cloud adoption rates soar, it’s often difficult for companies to assess the cloud-readiness of their applications. In the previous post in this two-part series, I introduced the process of automated source-code analytics, and I described how Deloitte’s Stormfury tool can help organizations rapidly assess their cloud-readiness and develop a faster path to the cloud. In this post, I’ll be taking a deeper dive into the benefits of automated source-code analytics and looking at real-life examples of how companies are using the process to accelerate cloud.......Continue reading
Source-code analytics: A faster path to the cloud
January 23, 2020
Companies may be able to gain a tremendous advantage in their cloud migration initiatives by using automated source-code analytics to identify and remediate issues in application code.
Cloud computing offers clear benefits such as increased agility, reduced IT spend, increased uptime, and an expanded portfolio of technologies that make it a business imperative. However, the most common methods for cloud migration—lift-and-shift, or just rehosting (IaaS) applications—do not make them cloud native. Alternatively, rewriting applications to be cloud-native is an expensive proposition that few companies can afford. The disadvantages of each of these approaches can weaken the business case for moving to the.......Continue reading
2020 Technology Industry Outlook
January 17, 2020
As tech companies pursue growth in the coming year, cybersecurity and the ethics of AI will likely be among their top considerations.
While familiar themes such as cloud computing and AI promise to continue dominating technology headlines in the coming year, 2020 could be a breakout year for edge computing. The time is right for companies to explore the advantages of processing data at the edge of their networks, according to Paul Sallomi, Deloitte’s global Technology, Media, and Telecommunications industry leader and global Technology sector leader. In this Q&A, Sallomi discusses some of the top opportunities, strategies, and considerations for technology companies seeking growth in the coming.......Continue reading
Six cloud migration questions for CFOs
January 7, 2020
Cloud technology’s ubiquity may have reached the point where the biggest risk for CFOs is not having a strategy in place for adoption of cloud-based solutions.
In addition to the technical and operational challenges of staying tethered to on-premise technology, companies face a fundamental business risk: keeping pace with competitors in an environment where the cloud represents a dramatic shift in how technology solutions are developed and delivered.......Continue reading
Treat your data center migration as if it were the first one ever
December 18, 2019
I’ve spent the last 15+ years helping clients leverage technology to grow their business and the last two helping a major financial services company move its enterprise portfolio to hybrid cloud. In the process my team and I learned a lot of lessons that can apply to a large-scale migration in any industry.
Taking on a large-scale migration can be a daunting (and expensive) task, made more complicated by the fact that an organization’s technology portfolio, internal processes, and end-state needs are unique. These five key lessons may help your organization manage a large-scale data migration effectively and efficiently........Continue reading
Oregon lottery revamps IT in a win for customers
December 11, 2019
Leaders in Oregon are prioritizing customer-centricity as they implement a new IT operating model and ramp up their digital gaming efforts, among other initiatives.
US state lotteries have long served up games to customers at gas stations, restaurants, and other brick-and-mortar establishments, raising much-needed revenues to fund schools, parks, and other public priorities. However, the rise of digital gaming, changing customer demographics and preferences, and rapidly emerging digital technologies inspired leaders at the Oregon Lottery to adopt a customer-focused mindset and establish a digital-first, cloud-enabled IT organization steeped in research and.......Continue reading
Beyond cloud-native: When portability is paramount
December 4, 2019
A blog post by Ashish Verma, managing director and US leader for data and analytics modernization, and Sanjeev Taran, specialist leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
In the early days of cloud computing, many of the enterprise world’s software efforts focused on making on-premise applications cloud-ready. With the help of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) technology, IT departments often lifted and shifted applications into the cloud to reduce hardware costs and overhead, among other benefits.
It wasn’t long, however, before organizations recognized they could derive additional value by going cloud-native, reorganizing people and processes and reworking applications with the cloud in mind. Toward that end, many embraced cloud providers’ platform as a service (PaaS) capabilities such as orchestration and streaming. In addition to lower costs, the rewards have included improved security and extensibility and faster time to market.......Continue reading
5 Trends giving cloud a boost
November 27, 2019
A blog post by David Schatsky, managing director, Deloitte LLP; Amit Chaudhary, principal and US cloud engineering lead, Deloitte Consulting LLP; and Amanpreet Arora, manager, Deloitte SVCS India Pvt. Ltd.
Most companies have already shifted some processes to the cloud to reduce costs and speed up service delivery. Recent developments in several key areas are putting wider adoption and additional rewards within closer reach.
Ninety percent of enterprises have adopted the cloud to some degree, according to the Deloitte US CIO Program’s 2018 survey of global CIOs, but only about 20 percent of business processes are currently running there. That dichotomy suggests many companies have a ways to go in using the cloud for purposes beyond lowering IT capital expenditures and accelerating service delivery—purposes such as innovation and transformation......Continue reading
Cloud with an edge takes IoT to new heights
November 8, 2019
A blog post by Ken Carroll and Mahesh Chandramouli, senior managers, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Some enterprises are adding edge computing to their cloud-based internet of things solutions, paving the way for accelerated data analysis and improved decision-making.
Just a few years ago, many people expected the internet of things (IoT) network of interconnected machines, sensors, and other devices to send all its data to the cloud for storage and processing. Today, however, edge computing architecture can place processing and storage closer to the physical sources of data generation. A growing number of IoT solutions now benefit from a combination of edge and cloud computing, which can help to alleviate latency, increase scalability, and enhance access to information to enable better, faster decision-making, among other.....Continue reading
Moving .NET framework applications to the cloud
October 31, 2019
A blog post Tarun Tomar, DC specialist senior, Deloitte Consulting LLP
One of the challenges that enterprise organizations face in today’s world is migrating their legacy applications to cloud. Although these apps still work, they can become unstable due to compatibility issues with existing Operating Systems (OS) and Infrastructure (Infra). If this problem is not addressed in time, organizations may have to replace these apps, requiring a huge investment of money, manpower, and time. In such scenarios, containers can offer a real advantage. Containerizing an app can help with a smooth transition from existing OS & Infra to modern day OS & Infra. It can also help streamline software development and facilitate application .....Continue reading
A new strategy for multicloud: Go deep, one at a time
October 25, 2019
A blog post Mike Kavis, managing director and chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Some organizations are missing out on the value of cloud by going cloud-agnostic. There may be a better way to avoid getting locked in to a single provider.
Many companies have a fear of getting locked in to any one cloud vendor, so they are going all-in on a multicloud strategy. In the process, they take one of two different approaches: Either they are choosing the best cloud for the specific workload type—one for analytics, one for enterprise grade processes, etc.—or they are insisting that every workload must be cloud agnostic. The later approach tends to burden organizations as they get bogged down chasing both technology and operations.....Continue reading
The power of IoT and cloud—How manufacturers can improve operations
October 18, 2019
A blog post Subrata Roy, Managing Director, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Many manufacturers face a range of material, resource and quality constraints that impact productivity and revenues on a daily basis. Since many large production floors can span literal miles, one without IoT enabled technology tends to lack complete visibility into each element of the production cycle, making the factory floor ecosystem rife with inefficiencies. Managers often find it difficult to locate parts in real time as they’re distributed throughout the factory floor, employees wait idly while maintenance is performed on a malfunctioning machine, and overall quality potentially suffers as a result.....Continue reading
Customer data privacy vs. cloud legislation
October 10, 2019
A blog post by Stephen McMaster
How can organizations retain control of their data in the cloud so that legal requests are sent to their organization, rather than to the cloud vendor?
One of the main challenges faced by cloud customers is how to handle situations where legislation in a cloud vendor’s home country conflicts with legislation in the customer’s country–specifically where a foreign government requests access to data stored by a cloud....Continue reading
Why hardware matters for the cloud?
September 19, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cloud is a crucial part of the conversation for any organization committed to maintaining a modern, robust IT infrastructure. That being said, the transition to the cloud is more than turning on a simple switch. Organizations must make technical decisions driven by strategic actions, ensure that applications run securely with optimized performance, and work to achieve cost benefits.
However, hardware considerations are often overlooked when deploying a public, private, hybrid, or multicloud. Wherever an organization is in its cloud migration journey, it is crucial that organizations identify the underlying hardware infrastructure and management frameworks that will provide mission-critical capabilities at minimum....Continue reading
Recent survey shows enterprise interest in blockchain continues—is cloud the answer?
September 5, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Blockchain planning starts now—and the role of cloud and cloud providers should not be overlooked.
A recent survey from Deloitte shows that blockchain, both the standard and enabling technology, is picking up steam. Born in Bitcoin, leveraged in financial transactions, voting, and data integration, blockchain has been pushed as the do-all technology for business.
According to the survey, “today, fintech remains a blockchain leader, but more organizations in more sectors—such as technology, media, telecommunications, life sciences and health care, and government—are expanding and diversifying their blockchain initiatives.” However, despite these advances, progress remains measured. As I see it, supply chain management is one of the most promising use cases. Much like monetary transfer, the supply chain can span thousands of touchpoints and transactions over an extended period of time.
The Deloitte survey reveals continued strong investment in blockchain. Indeed, enterprises appear willing to invest $5 million USD or more in new blockchain initiatives over the next 12 months, holding steady at 40 percent (up a point from 2018). At the same time, “53 percent of respondents say that blockchain technology has become a critical priority for their organizations in 2019—a 10-point increase over last year.” Also, 83 percent see compelling use cases for blockchain, up from 74 percent. The most positive metric, overall attitudes toward blockchain, have strengthened meaningfully, as defined by the....Continue reading
The cloud and the perfectly scalable enterprise
August 22, 2019
A blog post by , Amit Desai, principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP, Joseph Greiner, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Sid Seshadri, senior consultant, Deloitte Consulting LLP
How do traditional companies deal with competitors they may not even see coming? They become perfectly scalable.
Take a look at those new, ultra-successful companies that have, seemingly, come out of nowhere. They may have started on a shoestring budget, with a skeleton staff, but they have the potential to scale rapidly, and almost infinitely, and to grow exponentially. They do things that older, more traditional companies sometimes can’t. Things that traditional companies wish they could do. They tend to respond to market demands more quickly. Their customer base is growing, while those of traditional companies may be on the decline. In many cases, influencers hawk products from these new companies.
Why? Because they are what many old-guard companies are not: they’re agile. Both traditional and new companies can anticipate changes in markets, but the difference is the newer, more agile companies can change direction quickly and seize opportunities. They often operate with higher margins and shorter lead times at earlier stages in their business lifecycle. Further, they can increase or decrease their tech footprint with growth or contraction and launch platforms and systems in new markets. Finally, they can manage their support systems from a single console anywhere....Continue reading
Focus more on being agile than doing agile
August 1, 2019
A blog post Mike Kavis, managing director, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Focus more on being agile than doing agile
A framework is only as good as the people, processes, and organizational structures that use it.
Someone posted an article on LinkedIn the other day claiming “Agile is Dead”. The comments that followed were more interesting than the actual article. Many people were bashing agile frameworks. It is no secret that organizations have spend a lot of money on doing agile and many times never really achieved being agile. Right now, SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) is trending and many of my clients are implementing it. But methodologies and frameworks are nothing more than a set of guiding principles for delivering software.....Continue reading
Growth in the cloud: CyrusOne CFO Diane Morefield
July 31, 2019
A blog post by Robert FitzGerald
As cloud usage expands, data center REIT CyrusOne approaches projects more as a supply chain manager than as a real estate developer.
A veteran of the real estate investment trust sector, Diane Morefield, EVP and CFO of CyrusOne Inc., says the increasing movement to the cloud is shaping the data center REIT’s strategy, fueling its recent global expansion, and informing a high-speed culture. “We take a bricks-and-mortar supply chain model and apply it to the future, which differentiates us from many other real estate developers,” Morefield says. In this interview, Morefield discusses why the label “nontraditional REIT” doesn’t apply to CyrusOne in her view, and how finance acts as a hub to the business, with Robert FitzGerald, an Audit & Assurance partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP. She also explains what she looks for in finance talent, and describes her efforts to promote the recruitment, inclusion, and advancement of women and other groups in the REIT sector, with Carol Larson, an Audit & Assurance partner at Deloitte & Touche LLP and champion for Women in Finance for Deloitte’s CFO......Continue reading
Building internal cloud platforms: Balancing control vs. usability
July 25, 2019
A blog post Mike Kavis, managing director, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Becoming an internal cloud provider makes sense, but only if you can strike a balance between controls and usability.
Companies are primarily embracing public cloud for three core benefits: cost reduction, business agility, and access to innovation. The combination of infrastructure as code and fully managed services, such as database as a service (DBaaS), allows application builders to focus on meeting business requirements. Most of the infrastructure and the “IT plumbing” responsibilities can be offloaded to the cloud providers.
The rate of change being introduced in the age of the cloud far exceeds anything we have ever seen, and with great speed comes great risk. Without the right controls, organizations could go down a path that might lead to large breaches, external attacks, and other significant issues. To mitigate these risks, many companies stand up a cloud platform team to build guardrails around the chosen cloud service providers (CSPs) and become the central authority for cloud access and......Continue reading
How end of support for Windows and SQL servers can jump-start cloud migration and modernization
July 11, 2019
A blog post by Scott Rodgers, Master Solutions Architect at Deloitte
Can end-of-life support translate into new beginnings for your core infrastructure?
It’s either an aggravating predicament or a prospect for future growth, depending on your outlook. Either way, if your organization uses Windows Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008, you need to make some decisions fast.
That’s because Microsoft will soon end official support for both technologies, starting with termination of SQL Server 2008 on July 9, 2019, followed by Windows Server 2008 on January 14, 2020. Addressing end of support will likely create burdensome IT projects for organizations around the world, given that more than 37,000 global companies still rely on Windows Server 2008, according......Continue reading
Anthos: Demystifying the biggest news out of GCN
June 26, 2019
A blog post by Mike Kavis, Chief Cloud Architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Anthos offers a single platform on Google’s cloud that allows enterprises to run its workloads in any cloud—whether that’s hybrid, on prem, public, or multi-cloud. Can you separate the Anthos facts from fiction?
We’re two months out of Google Cloud Next, and the dust is settling around Anthos, the biggest announcement coming out of the sold-out event. Deloitte is working closely together with Google to bring Anthos to more customers and help them adopt a hybrid and multi-cloud strategy through our expanded......Continue reading
Cargill, Commonwell set sights on NoOps
June 19, 2019
When IT operations can be automated and abstracted from underlying infrastructure, there’s a world of opportunity to deliver new business value.
In their ongoing efforts to get more out of their IT investments, CIOs around the world are increasingly embracing DevOps, NoOps, and serverless computing—trends that use automation to free operations talent from numerous traditional systems administration tasks. For agricultural giant Cargill and Canadian Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group, those efforts are already delivering results, paving the way for strategic transformation......Continue reading
Are disaster recovery and cloud redundant?
June 14, 2019
Many consider disaster recovery (DR) and cloud computing as redundant investments. Indeed, enterprises are often told by some providers that DR is built into the cloud infrastructure, and that the cloud provides all you need to keep your data safe. Based on what I’ve seen, this turns out not to be entirely true.
It’s understandable that some business leaders want to believe that cloud could completely eliminate the need for DR safeguards. Comprehensive DR strategies with the correct enabling technology are uncommon these days. Most businesses view DR as too costly, and even if they make the investment they may lack the staff to maintain those systems. With the arrival of affordable cloud native DR technology, many are now rethinking the role of DR......Continue reading
Cloud accelerates AI adoption
June 12, 2019
AI’s initial benefits accrued mostly to technology giants with strong IT infrastructures and deep pockets, but those early adopters have rolled out cloud-based services to bring AI to the masses.
Advances in machine learning and deep-learning neural networks have opened up myriad ways for companies to improve their operations, develop new offerings, and provide better customer experiences. However, until recently, most organizations lacked the expertise and resources to take full advantage of AI. Only companies with access to large data sets, scarce expertise, massive data centers, and specialized processing power were able to uncover the best AI use cases, create customized solutions, and scale......Continue reading
Three signs that you need to fire your CIO
June 11, 2019
The move to cloud can expose weaknesses in your technology leadership team. Do any of these examples sound familiar?
It’s rumored that the cloud has caused many a CIO to resign or be fired. Why? In my view, the cloud is the latest technology to expose the flawed thinking of some CIOs. It’s not just the old school CIOs who are resistant to hand operations over to the public cloud who become cloud causalities. CIOs who are too eager to embrace “the next big thing” can also find themselves......Continue reading
Cloud Managed Services—A logical extension of cloud adoption
June 4, 2019
A blog post by Temano Shurland, Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory Accounting & Finance principal, Deloitte & Touche LLP
Cloud technologies are a catalyst for change in digital finance. Explore our insights and considerations for navigating your journey into the cloud.
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) cloud computing is disrupting the digital finance landscape, transforming companies’ IT architecture and infrastructure by using scalable, elastic technology to deliver services via the internet rather than traditional on-premise architectures. Fueled in part by its flexibility to meet a wide range of diverse needs, cloud ERP systems are seeing immense growth within finance organizations and......Continue reading
Cloud Managed Services—A logical extension of cloud adoption
May 30, 2019
A blog post by Marc Kagan, Deloitte Consulting
Can Cloud Managed Services increase the already-transformative value the cloud has to offer your organization?
Why did your organization start its cloud journey? If your answer was like that of many other organizations, it was probably to increase your agility, enhance your ability to respond to threats, and instantly scale to meet market opportunities. On the less glamorous front, it may have also been to get out from under some of the technical debt you’ve accumulated over the......Continue reading
Serverless computing for CFOs
May 24, 2019
A blog post by Eric Lam, Senior Manager, Deloitte Consulting and Karthik Pallapothu, Senior Consultant, Deloitte Consulting
Serverless implementations change the way costs are calculated and how organizations are billed. What do CFOs need to know about potential capital planning and operational challenges?
The last decade of cloud computing advances have helped IT transcend old infrastructure constraints and develop and deploy software at scale¾while also driving down operational costs and improving time to market. Now, cloud computing is moving toward even greater flexibility and smaller units of scale in the form of serverless......Continue reading
The burgeoning business technology organization
May 14, 2019
A blog post by Atilla Terzioglu, principal, Suseela Kadiyala, specialist leader and Ninaad Balachandran, consultant
As business demand for specialized, customer-facing capabilities rises, many companies recognize that market competitiveness may largely hinge on their agility and speed to market. As such, leaders are increasingly identifying opportunities to embed customer-centricity into both their technology and broader business operating constructs.
In the increasingly popular Thin IT operating model, many technologists specializing in traditionally IT-centric capabilities like application development, maintenance, and operations are moving out of the IT organization and into business units......Continue reading
DevOps, NoOps: Power tools for the software era
May 9, 2019
A blog post by Gene Kim, author, researcher, and DevOps enthusiast, IT Revolution
By enabling small teams of developers to create large-scale value, DevOps—and, increasingly, NoOps—could help define the next winners and losers of the business world.
For almost 20 years I’ve had the privilege of studying high-performing technology organizations, and all our research shows decisively that high performers are massively outperforming their peers, often by orders of magnitude. They ship software to their customers more quickly and safely, which enables them to rapidly innovate and experiment, so they can win in the marketplace by outlearning the......Continue reading
Diagnosing cloud complexity: Recognize the symptoms in your organization
May 7, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cloud promised to lower costs and increase agility. But is the growing complexity of multi-cloud, hybrid cloud, and legacy systems holding you back?
It seems to me that enterprise IT complexity is like back pain; everyone’s got it, or will have it. It’s how you manage it, how you treat it, and how you deal with it ahead of time that makes all of the......Continue reading
AI…what are we waiting for?
May 3, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
I’m one of many people who will tell you that AI is nothing new. In fact, I was an AI analytics technician directly out of college at the age of 22. I’m now 56.
Why did it take so long to adopt AI as a mainstream enabling technology? One word: Cloud.
AI of the 1980s was way too expensive for most commercial businesses. It required a million-dollar buy-in, even if you leveraged timesharing services (AKA the model T of cloud). The emergence of cloud technology suddenly made AI affordable and more useable at the same time......Continue reading
Is college a cloud computing pro requirement?
April 30, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Non-traditional technology training options offer students and professionals alternative ways to develop in-demand skills and enter the cloud job market, challenging the notion that four-year college is the only path to a career in cloud. College was one of the best parts of my life. I was in a fraternity, played sports, and got to leverage a real computer for the first time. Today my longest and dearest friends are people I met in college......Continue reading
From Serverless to NoOps: IT’s automation agenda
April 25, 2019
A blog post by Ken Corless, principal and cloud practice CTO, and Mike Kavis, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP; and Kieran Norton, principal and infrastructure security leader, Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory, Deloitte & Touche LLP
The hyperautomation of cloud computing has created the promise of a NoOps environment where software and software-defined hardware are provisioned dynamically, setting IT talent free to pursue higher-value work.
In this era of tight budgets and continual disruption, finding ways to shift resources from operations to innovation remains a top CIO goal. Automation frequently plays a key role, and today many organizations are embracing serverless computing, in which cloud vendors allocate compute, storage, and memory dynamically and automatically. That relieves enterprises of the need to handle those tasks manually, but for many, it’s just the beginning. Often, the real goal is a NoOps IT environment—one that is so automated and abstracted from underlying infrastructure that only a very small team is needed to manage it. Surplus human capacity can then focus on creating new......Continue reading
Big Data or Low Carbon?
April 22, 2019
A blog post by Richard Pone, Cloud and Infrastructure Advisor, Deloitte MCS Limited
How can IT executives balance the demands of their businesses while also adhering to their organizations’ sustainability goals? Here are three key strategies to consider.
In October 2018, a landmark international report warned of a global climate crisis as early as 2040 if drastic measures are not taken to transform the world’s economy and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. While much of the commentary surrounding this report focused on the political complexities of curbing fossil fuel consumption, one area of our economy is ripe for innovation—the Information Technology......Continue reading
Are open source and public cloud at odds?
April 19, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Public cloud providers and open source project leaders often have conflicting objectives. Should enterprise be worried?
It’s been a long debate. As more public cloud providers offer open source systems, and public cloud providers modify them for their own purposes, the more open source communities get nervous. Are their worries valid? Should enterprises be nervous as well?
Let’s remember that both public cloud providers and open source project leaders have common as well as separate motivations......Continue reading
Edging out other emerging technologies, cloud takes the lead
April 16, 2019
A blog post by Omar Aguilar and John Tweardy
As the underlying enabler for advanced technologies like automation and AI, organizations are eager to put the right cloud foundation into place to expand their capabilities.
The conversation around cloud has shifted significantly in a very short time, evolving from a technical capability or possible business consideration to a strategic priority. No longer considered an emerging technology, cloud is an enabling technology that can drive innovation, improve process efficiencies, and facilitate market-focused.....Continue reading
Anaplan CEO Frank Calderoni on the future of cloud
April 12, 2019
A blog post by Andrew Marks, senior writer, Deloitte Insights
The tech industry veteran reflects on trends in cloud adoption and the challenges and opportunities of taking his company public in a rapidly changing marketplace.
While many private companies have shied away from going public in recent years, Frank Calderoni, president and CEO of Anaplan, felt his 12-year-old company was ready to go public last October. As cloud technologies have gone mainstream, Calderoni says the questions companies ask have shifted from the fundamentals of software-as-a-service (SaaS) to how the holistic, cross-functional application of cloud-based tools can drive value across the enterprise. He spoke with Kirsten Rhodes, an Advisory principal with Deloitte Risk and Financial Advisory for Deloitte & Touche LLP, about the evolution of cloud-based technologies and the role his company’s IPO has played in helping it pursue its strategic.....Continue reading
Speed, governance: Yin and Yang of the Cloud world
April 10, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Operating effectively in the hybrid world means making the most of the cloud’s speed and flexibility while ensuring adequate governance is in place.
As companies around the world seek to tap the numerous benefits of the public cloud, many find themselves operating in a hybrid environment, with a mix of cloud and legacy technologies. Offering a way to rapidly access the agility, scalability, and cost-efficiency of the public cloud without giving up traditional core systems, the hybrid approach has emerged as a new norm in the enterprise world. By 2023, the hybrid cloud market is expected to grow to $97.64 billion, up from $38.27 billion.....Continue reading
Gazing into the Google Cloud: What’s new and next for Next ‘19?
April 2, 2019
A blog post by Lisa Noon, managing director
Managing director Lisa Noon looks into her Google Cloud Next crystal ball and shares her predictions for this year’s conference.
In just a few days, business leaders, cloud developers—and yes, lots of geeks(!)—will be taking over the Moscone Center in San Francisco for Google Cloud Next ’19. It’s a privilege to be part of this and difficult to believe how far this event has come in a short time. I actually still have the badge from the Customer/Partner Advisory Board meeting on October 16, 2013, where as one of 60 participants I had the opportunity to both learn from and share insights .....Continue reading
The Google Cloud journey
April 2, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
As Google Next ’19 approaches, Deloitte Chief Cloud Officer David Linthicum reflects back on the early days of Google Cloud and its incredible journey to present day.
The year was 2009. A young(er) Dave Linthicum was busy building an application in a new cloud computing PaaS offering called Google App Engine, which was still just a preview version. It would be two more years before App Engine became a fully-supported Google product. Fast-forward to current day, and Google Cloud is one of the fastest growing cloud companies.....Continue reading
The two T’s of cloud security: Talent and technology
March 29, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Deloitte recently released its latest Future of Cyber survey, bringing together the perspectives of 500 C-level executives who have visibility to and responsibility for cybersecurity in companies with at least $500 million in annual revenue. I was encouraged to see that more and more organizations are taking a proactive approach to preparing for and responding to cyber incidents. However, many of the same challenges continue to get in the way: Budgetary limitations, talent gaps, and misalignment to executive management’s digital transformation priorities to name some of the big.....Continue reading
Is cloud complexity your biggest security threat?
March 26, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
When your IT department is overwhelmed by cloud complexity, hackers can exploit vulnerabilities and find a way in. Organizations need to manage cloud complexity in order to mitigate potential security threats.
Cloud complexity is something we’ve addressed here many times, and for good reason. The rise of cloud computing has not replaced on-premises systems as much as some people had originally anticipated. To make matters even more complicated we now leverage multicloud, which typically means the use of more than one public cloud. More and more legacy systems are mixed with private clouds and/or mixed with plural public clouds, which leads to complexity that’s overwhelming enterprise....Continue reading
Thin IT: The emerging technology operating model
March 19, 2019
A blog post by Atilla Terzioglu, principal, Suseela Kadiyala, specialist leader, and Ninaad Balachandran, consultant, Deloitte Consulting LLP
As technology plays an increasingly prominent role in customer-facing offerings, and new tools and models make technology more accessible, tomorrow’s IT organization will look very different from today’s.
The IT function has traditionally had a monopoly on enterprise technology. Lines of business have relied heavily on centralized IT departments, helmed by a CIO, to provide sought-after capabilities, and IT has been best suited to vet, select, deploy, and scale applications and infrastructure efficiently and....Continue reading
IT architecture in the cloud age: An evolution
March 15, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
In the past, architects were burdened with all-consuming tasks but lacked the power to enact meaningful change. What’s different with cloud?
The role of the IT architect has been evolving for the last 30 years. In that time there have been misstarts and missed opportunities.
In the past, architects were burdened with all-consuming tasks but lacked the power to enact meaningful change. The term “governance” has been tossed around as the responsibility of architects –they created rules and policies for how IT was to be done. This meant that they were responsible for enforcing the rules, particularly in the 80s and 90s. They attended meetings and acted as a pest, but without the power....Continue reading
Is your cloud architecture too complex?
March 12, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
We’re living in a world of “hardware hoarders,” where nothing gets pushed out the door even though the core applications have migrated. The first step is admitting you have a problem.
The growing cloud computing complexity was recently documented by the Wall Street Journal that cites a survey of 46 CIOs by KeyBanc Capital Markets. It found that 32 percent said they plan to use multiple vendors to create internal private cloud systems, while 27 percent planned hybrid cloud....Continue reading
Can you place cloud-based compliance into a domain?
March 8, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Configurable domains may help you abstract yourself from regulatory complexity and remain compliant with minimal effort.
People often ask how I deal with compliance issues that can change each year. My answer? The right architectural approach is to place them into a configurable domain.
What does that mean? It could cover anything that needs to change based upon configurations instead of programming, such as the rules of a governance engine. Programming would require that changes go through testing, integration, etc., whereas rules or governance engines only require that we change policy or rule....Continue reading
Using cloud in the GDPR era
March 5, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
For many organizations, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation requires a new level of data governance. Cloud storage can make that trickier.
In industries such as health care and financial services, regulatory requirements have long shaped companies’ use of the cloud. Today, any organization with data on residents of the European Union faces similar constraints thanks to....Continue reading
Top three problems to solve around edge computing
February 28, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Edge computing offers intriguing potential benefits, but not without complex challenges. How do organizations tackle the most pressing edge computing problems?
Edge computing is often confused with cloud computing, but they are very different and do very different jobs. Indeed, I’m not sure edge computing would have been created were it not for issues that business found in transmitting everything back to a centralized cloud.
As with any new technology, there are specific problems related to edge computing that are still left to be solved and the solutions....Continue reading
The societal impact of cloud
February 21, 2019
A blog post by Janet Foutty, chair of the board, and Ranjit Bawa, principal and cloud leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
The cloud’s effect within the business world may be relatively clear, but its impact on society is just starting to be understood. Leaders have a responsibility to recognize the implications and help ensure they are addressed.
The world today is increasingly cloud-enabled, and the implications for businesses and consumers alike are far-reaching. Not only does the cloud offer new ways to access computing capacity and data quickly and inexpensively, but it can also boost innovation and put companies on a fast track to leverage disruptive practices and technologies as they are invented and matured. DevOps, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, edge computing, cryptocurrency—all typically rely on the scalability, efficiency, and ubiquity of the cloud. In many ways, the term cloud has come to mean much more than just cloud technology, per se; rather, it’s redefined....Continue reading
Determining the value of cloud for your enterprise? Just spell C-A-T
February 19, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Back in my college professor days, I often used gimmicks to make it easier for my students to remember IT processes. While they seemed a bit hokey, they actually work.
Those who are tasked with determining the value of cloud computing have a complex job in front of them. There is much to remember, and most enterprises that get off track often forget to ask specific questions.
To make things easier, there is a simple way to remember what areas to focus on. Just remember to spell out C-A-T, cat....Continue reading
Will New Cloud Technology Save You? Almost Never
February 15, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
What do containers, serverless computing, and machine learning have in common? They are all newer, hyped cloud computing technologies that have been the talk of the tech press and tech conferences.
Cloud providers have an incentive to keep building new technology, to keep their services compelling, to get ahead of the hype cycle, and thus make more money. That said, people focus on the newest thing, and we’ll focus on what’s hip and cool most of the time versus more traditional approaches ....Continue reading
Integrated health: Four ways IPaaS is revolutionizing the healthcare industry–part two
February 7, 2019
A blog post by Logan Smith and Anil Bommakanti
IPaaS provides robust solutions for each of the four areas mentioned and when implemented effectively, IPaaS could revolutionize the healthcare industry from FQHCs to federal agencies and every connection in-between.
Interoperability is one system’s ability to communicate and exchange data with disparate external systems. In the current example scenario, a federal agency needs to collect data from FQHCs from across the country. Each FQHC may have its own unique electronic health record (EHR) system. In order to achieve interoperability using IPaaS, technicians can create connections by developing an API layer that....Continue reading
Integrated health: Four ways IPaaS is revolutionizing the healthcare industry–part one
February 5, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Let’s face it, managing medical records is tedious, time-consuming, and expensive. The health care system is far from achieving a vision where individual needs are elevated, and providers have a seamless way to share health information between sources. What’s a potential solution?
Let’s face it, managing medical records is tedious, time-consuming, and expensive. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act passed in 2009 stimulated significant health information technology (IT) adoption. While digital adoption has increased , the health care system is far from achieving a vision where individual needs are elevated, and providers have a seamless way to share health information between sources. The healthcare industry still needs data structure uniformity, interoperability and process....Continue reading
Cloud career advice: Pick a specialty
January 31, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
In cloud technology, specialty segment skills and an understanding of specific enabling technology increases your chances to be paid top dollar for having those specific skills. Review them all, pick the ones that interest you most, and then look at the salary ranges.
I love the questions I get when I speak at colleges and universities, questions such as: “What job can I get that makes the most money in cloud computing?” or, “What skills do I need to pay the bills?” Or my favorite: “How can I get paid the most....Continue reading
Are you ready for the cloud?
January 29, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
I’m always asked about enterprises’ cloud readiness and where they are in the cycle, in terms of processes, technologies, and talent they have in place to best-leverage public cloud technology. The reality is that there is really no definitive answer. Some enterprises that are successful with cloud computing came from way behind, technologically. Some enterprises that are very state-of-the-art fail due to different reasons. So, how can an enterprise increase its chances of success?....Continue reading
Leveraging the Cloud to find more meaning in data
January 17, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
What’s possible now with cloud is the ability to find meaning in data to allow businesses to make almost perfect decisions. An example would be the ability to find patterns in the sales data.
The creative use of data often takes me by surprise. I mean, raw data does not tell you much, but when you consider all the types of data and their almost limitless combinations and aggregations, it tends to boggle the mind. Finding meaning in data that is not readily apparent is where advanced analytics and machine....Continue reading
Cloud as a multiplier
January 15, 2019
A blog post by Habeeb Dihu, principal, Retail and Consumer Products Cloud Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
For retail developers, the cloud is a multiplier. Today an operating system and development environment are just a few clicks away. And as cloud capabilities improve, retailers can take advantage of them as soon as the provider makes them available.
Software, and more broadly technology, is increasingly a driver of business outcomes. It has opened new channels for retailers. It can automate manual processes and cut costs across the supply chain and in-store experience domains. It can deliver insights that enable better decision-making on merchandising, pricing, and other retail functions. The cloud – especially in combination with....Continue reading
Cloud native computing: The future of cloud
January 10, 2019
A blog post by Vishveshwara Vasa, Cloud Native Development Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Deloitte is proud to announce that we’re becoming a member of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). This will allow our clients to now have access to some of the most revolutionary cloud native developments, helping them get to the future faster.
It is an oft-repeated adage across the industry that every business is a software business. In the age of cloud computing, that simple turn of phrase has become more relevant—and important—than ever, as businesses as diverse as global banking giants and consumer packaged goods....Continue reading
If you have one cloud computing 2019 resolution, this should be it
January 8, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
This is the time of the year that everyone in IT checks their list to make sure their budgets are in order. They have staffing plans for at least the first quarter, and assurances that they are making good progress with the current list of projects. However, there’s an item that seems to fall off many budget checklists in enterprise IT; the modernization of technology, including cloud enablement.
If you make one promise to yourself for 2019, you need to make the commitment to get started on your cloud journey. I’m not talking about POCs with a few systems, or doing a virtualization install to cloud. I’m talking about at least 100 systems and associated....Continue reading
Cloud security requires a second opinion
January 3, 2019
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cloud security is like any other type of security. The higher the degree of effort you put into the planning and technology selection, the better your security will be. This holds true for any platform, including cloud computing.
That’s why it’s a good idea to get a second opinion when it’s time to firm up security, planning, architecture, and technology selection. A second opinion should confirm the following:
- Compliance to all rules and regulations. This becomes an important matter. You can have the most brilliant people work on a cloud security solution but miss the boat on compliance. This can result in fines and loss of creditability that are worse than any breach that may occur. That’s why you need a second option from a SME (Subject Matter Expert) to make certain the correct rules and regulations are applied, and work together to ensure that the resulting solution addresses this important....Continue reading
Serverless vs. containers
December 19, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Why do I think that serverless will dominate…okay, slightly dominate? It’s a matter of looking at past patterns of adoption by developers who ultimately make the calls here, and they should. These are a few things to consider:
Developers are not infrastructure people. The use of public cloud computing has forced many developers to become savvy as to what memory, CPU, and other platform capacity they need. While they are not bolting servers on racks, and never did, they make decisions that were previously left up to hardware....Continue reading
Can you take advantage of the innovation economy? Part two
December 13, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Enabling technology such as cloud computing, AI, DevOps, and other technologies that reduce friction is key. Today these enabling technologies are considered table stakes for businesses.
Many companies encourage new ideas by using rewards to employees, and even sharing in the profits that these new ideas generate. Even if ideas become products or services that don’t find a market, it’s not considered a failure. The ability to find out what doesn’t work points toward what does. Enabling technology such as cloud computing, AI, DevOps, and other technologies that reduce friction is....Continue reading
What's next for containers?
December 11, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
What’s next in cloud container orchestration programs? Here are a few trends that will likely affect how you build and containerize applications in 2019.
Here are three 3 trends that will likely affect how you build and containerize applications in 2019. Kubernetes has become the cloud container orchestration program that many want to use, with others such as Docker Swarm and Apache Methos close seconds (depending on who you talk to). However, those who contribute to the Kubernetes open source project aren't resting on their laurels. This year, less than three-months after the last significant release of Kubernetes 1.10, Kubernetes 1.11 is already on....Continue reading
Can you take advantage of the innovation economy? Part one
December 6, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Many are ill-prepared to take advantage of the emerging innovation economy because they need advanced systems driven largely by the use of emerging technology such as cloud computing and related technologies provided within the...Continue reading
Is data still a first-class citizen in the cloud?
December 4, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Worldwide revenues for big data and business analytics are likely to grow from $150.8 billion in 2017 to $210 billion in 2020. That's a compound annual growth rate of 11.9 percent, with most of this growth occurring within public cloud...Continue reading
Are you ready for the Brandpocalypse?
November 29, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Smaller companies were once no threat to the big guys. Then cloud computing allowed small companies to punch way above their weight class by leveraging technology to disrupt an...Continue reading
Three ways cloud computing enables mergers & acquisitions
November 27, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Über-mergers will be the focus of enterprises over the next three to five years. The Global 2000 wants to leverage their stock value as a currency to make key acquisitions that will take them to...Continue reading
Deloitte at AWS re:Invent 2018
November 26–30, 2018 | Las Vegas
Join Deloitte, an Emerald sponsor, at AWS re:Invent 2018—the largest user conference of the global Amazon Web Services (AWS) community. With a 40x40 booth, eight speaking sessions, exclusive sponsorship of the life sciences and financial services tracks, and more, our presence will be hard to miss. Experience how Deloitte can help you get to the future faster. We look forward to seeing you...Continue reading
Being ready for Cyber Everyday: How cloud and DevOps help you scale for the holidays and beyond
November 15, 2018
A blog post by Atilla Terzioglu, principal; Jimmy Man, principal; Kasey Lobaugh, Chief Innovation Officer; and David Wise, manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP
For consumers, Cyber Monday marks the official start of the online holiday shopping season. Behind the scenes, however, store operators will have been in full swing for some time, and additional computing capacity is being reserved to handle the expected surge in traffic. But this “all hands on deck” situation...Continue reading
The good, bad, and ugly of containers
November 13, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
A rapid rise in the use of containers has been fueled largely by the perception that containers remove us from cloud provider dependency. While this can be the case, there are many other factors to consider before leveraging containers...Continue reading
Moving to the Cloud? Get ready to deal with culture issues
November 9, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
What does corporate IT culture have to do with being successful in the cloud? Pretty much everything...Continue reading
Future-proofing: What consumer product companies can learn from Agile, DevOps, and the rise of RPA
November 6, 2018
A blog post by Habeeb Dihu, principal, Retail and Consumer Products Cloud Leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Continuous improvement (CI) is on the verge of a comeback. In the face of slowing growth and ever-more online competitors, the consumer products (CP) industry now finds itself searching for alternative ways to boost...Continue reading
Moving to the cloud – Do you have a choice?
November 2, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Everyone wants to look out for their own self-interest and move in that direction. This time the clear direction...Continue reading
The business of hybrid and multicloud cloud computing
October 30, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
While many are automatically moving to hybrid and multicloud computing, the business benefits should be known to you before making the move. The availability of heterogeneous cloud computing services...Continue reading
Join Deloitte at CloudExpo 2018
October 26, 2018
Discover best practices. Spark new ideas. Engage with leading minds from the world on Cloud Computing, DevOps, FinTech, Digital Transformation and all they entail. Join us at CloudExpo 2018...Continue reading
Understanding cloud platforms
October 25, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Platforms for hybrid and multicloud need to be native to the cloud platforms they are supporting, and thus you’ll choose a PaaS from the IaaS provider of choice. However, there is no reason that you can’t mix and match PaaS and IaaS players if you need to...Continue reading
DevOps and Cloud, no longer optional
October 23, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
It’s not enough to build both a DevOps organization transformation and public cloud solution. You need to do the harder work of making them work and play well together...Continue reading
Get a cloud computing college degree?
October 18, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Lately colleges and universities have been focused on cloud computing. The reasons are obvious, those with computing skills that focus on cloud computing can make a ton in the marketplace right now, and thus the training is in demand...Continue reading
Cloud growth focused on IaaS, and IaaS and PaaS combined
October 16, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Besides the fact that PaaS users tend to leverage what we can call “PaaS of convenience,” what does this mean for enterprises? Here are a few things come to mind..Continue reading
Cloud and data analytics clearly joined at the hip
October 11, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
The reality is that if analytics are in your near or long-term future of dealing with enterprise data than cloud is probably the analytics solution you’re seeking, or at least the core platform...Continue reading
How to keep up with cloud computing
October 5, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Where to go to keep up with the ever-changing cloud computing industry? As technology evolves, so do publications and information sources. Here are some ways to stay current...Continue reading
Cloud outsourcing? Let’s look at the facts.
October 2, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cloud outsourcing could precipitate an extraordinary change in the sourcing world. With some help from the Deloitte 2018 global outsourcing survey, here are a few benefits of outsourcing and cloud computing...Continue reading
Cloud complexity management (CCM): Dealing with data
September 27, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
If you’re often frustrated due to the fact that your enterprises data is becoming very redundant, you’re not alone. Indeed, there is typically no “single source of truth” for data concepts such as customers, inventory, product, etc. Indeed, the use of redundant data often leads to erroneous data which leads to unreliability that the data used by the business is actually correct...Continue reading
Cloud complexity management (CCM): A new year, a new problem
September 25, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
I expect 2019 will be the year when both cloud complexity and cloud complexity management(CCM) starts to emerge. Why 2019? That is the year when workloads on cloud-based systems surpass 25 percent, and when most enterprises are likely to hit the tipping point in terms of dealing with the resulting complexity.
What is occurring now is that enterprises are spending most of their time and money migrating applications and data to the cloud. At the same time this is making the IT infrastructure and platforms more complex considering that the legacy stuff still has to run, and now you have public and private cloud-based systems to deal with as well. What’s a CIO to do?...Continue reading
Three cloud security problems that you can solve today
September 20, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cloud computing security needs to be systemic, and for most enterprises, that's a bridge too far. It seems that many have lifted and shifted applications without a lot of thought around how those workloads will be secured.
But, if you're one of these enterprises you have some opportunities to solve some common problems, that like back pain, most enterprises have. Here are those common problems, and potential solutions to consider...Continue reading
How cloud can change the enterprise CIO's role in three steps
August 30, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
The role of the CIO changes each decade. Back in the 1960s and 70s they were barely known within the organization. In those days, whatever computerization existed within enterprises was rare and expensive, and typically run by the CFO. Then the 1980s came along and we saw the rise of a new strategic role within enterprises, that of the CIO.
CIOs now have responsibility for the computer systems, networks, data centers, and all supporting human resources. However, what those resources are and what those humans do has changed a great deal in the last 30 years...Continue reading
CloudOps is different than traditional ITOps
August 28, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
CloudOps, as the name suggests, refers to cloud operations. It’s a combination of network, security, performance, device management, and help desk tasks. Basically, it covers all things needed to run a set of cloud-based business applications, ongoing.
Many people look at CloudOps as a continuation of ITOps, or the next generation of ITOps. This is an incorrect assumption when you consider the different skills and technology that are a part of both...Continue reading
The case for keeping "no cloud" advocates around
August 23, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
There seems to be a culture shift wherein those who don’t aggressively push cloud computing are not working with the culture and hype—and are therefore working against it. Why is this a bad thing?
Some people who push back on cloud computing, now or in past years, have been demoted, pushed out of the inner circles of corporate IT, or have lost their jobs. Why? Their arguments against cloud computing often were and still are unfounded arguments against changes to the more familiar status quo...Continue reading
When it comes to cloud complexity, you need to focus on priorities
August 21, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Cloud architectures are getting complex as we move into multicloud configurations. Instead of having over 500 cloud services to manage, from storage to compute, we now have 1500 plus under management. Most of them are redundant to other services.
Enterprises are reaching a tipping point. This will happen when the number of cloud services under manage exceed the enterprise’s ability to manage those services. The exact tipping point will vary from company to company...Continue reading
Finding the killer cloud-based machine learning applications
August 16, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Machine learning on the cloud is all the rage these days, and for good reason. While it once could cost millions of dollars to put together an AI application, these days it's typically hundreds of dollars with access to almost unlimited amounts of computing power, databases, and mass storage.
But, now that we have it, what do we do with it? There is an ongoing push to find just the right use cases for machine learning and the cloud...Continue reading
Finding the right fit for cloud-based deep learning
August 14, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Deep learning and machine learning are part of the same AI family. Unlike machine learning’s task-specific algorithms, deep learning uses learning data representations.
First of all, deep learning and machine learning are part of the same artificial intelligence (AI) family. Unlike machine learning’s task-specific algorithms, deep learning uses learning data representations. Moreover, the knowledge model deep learning builds can be supervised, semi-supervised or even unsupervised...Continue reading
Deloitte makes its mark on Google Cloud Next ‘18
August 10, 2018
In late July, Google hosted the single largest event in the company’s history: Google Cloud Next ‘18. With over 25,000 attendees descending on downtown San Francisco, the city was transformed into a launching pad for the future of cloud.
Over 300 Deloitte practitioners from eight countries made the trip to support Deloitte’s top-tier marquee sponsorship, talk to clients, and share their knowledge of the Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Deloitte Consulting LLP’s executive and management committees were also in attendance for Tuesday’s opening keynote, showcasing Deloitte’s commitment to its Google Cloud practice...Continue reading
Google now provides On-Prem Kubernetes
August 9, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
As the name gives away, GKE On-Prem is an on-premises version of the Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Now you can have Kubernetes running in a public cloud, and within your data center as well.
Chen Goldberg, Director of Engineering for Google Cloud, was the first On Cloud Podcast guest live from Google Next in San Francisco California. When asked about the most important Kubernetes announcements at Google Next, she did not hesitate to cite GKE On-Prem...Continue reading
A Serverless Kubernetes?
August 7, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Knative provides a set of middleware components that allow you to build container-based applications that can run anywhere: On-premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center.
Just announced at Google Next: Knative1. Knative provides a set of middleware components that allow you to build container-based applications that can run anywhere: On-premises, in the cloud, or even in a third party data center...Continue reading
Four ways that cloud computing changes the role of the CIO
August 2, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Are you a CIO? Not only do you have a tough job, you also have a job that will likely change a great deal over the next five years.
Emerging technology is responsible for much of the change. In this case, cloud computing. The CIO needs to morph his or her roles and responsibilities to effectively address the different consumption model, as well as new demands from the departments...Continue reading
Are you thinking about taxes and cloud computing?
July 31, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
First, this is not a blog about taxes. I’m not a tax accountant, and that’s not my area of expertise. However, taxes affect us all, and the decisions we make in business often impact our tax responsibilities. This is a blog about the tax implications to consider when looking at the technology of cloud computing.
What seems to be most at issue, tax-wise, is the fact that we give up some depreciation deductions when using cloud computing...Continue reading
The Cloud and Disaster Recovery
July 24, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
While most people realize that disaster recovery (DR) capabilities are built into public clouds, in many cases, the reality is that it’s your responsibility. Moreover, what you think is there may not be.
Most enterprises have some DR capabilities, even if it’s just on their most critical systems. When data was on-premises, organizations had to stand up systems that were geographically different...Continue reading
Join Deloitte and Google Cloud at Google Cloud Next ’18
July 24-26, 2018
A blog post by Jacques De Villiers, National Google Cloud Practice Leader
Success is in the forecast at Google Cloud Next ’18. Consider this your formal invitation to our three-day expedition through cloud infrastructure, devices, security, and machine learning environments as we take you to the cloud and beyond. All you’ll need is your thinking cap, perspective, and possibly a light jacket—it is San Francisco after all...Continue reading
Cloud portability: Choosing your path
July 19, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Longtime techies like me are no doubt familiar with the Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), a group of standards to maintain compatibility between operating systems. Writing programs to POSIX makes sense because by using it you can be pretty sure programs will port easily across a large family of Unix derivatives, including Linux.
The POSIX concept is fairly straightforward: Force the platforms to maintain a consistent set of APIs from platform to platform...Continue reading
Dealing with international cloud security
July 17, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Let’s face it, for most global companies, more than half of the computing systems reside outside of the continental United States. As organizations move into cloud computing, the same is true.
Cloud computing is not just about dealing with systems in a single country hosted by a single cloud computing service. It’s about many distributed systems residing on public clouds that must be managed as if they were clustered together...Continue reading
Dealing with the Cloud Computing Skills Gap
July 16, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
It’s time to deal with the cloud computing skills gap. Simply put, this gap is the difference between the skills currently on staff, and the skills needed to both stand up and maintain cloud-based systems effectively. For some enterprises, this gap is narrow. For others, it’s as wide as the Grand Canyon.
Let’s walk through the process to deal with your own cloud computing skills gap, and address ways to help close that gap altogether...Continue reading
Picking an IaaS public cloud? Look for 'good bones'
July 12, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) clouds are much the same as houses. They need a good foundation of IaaS services to provide value to your enterprise. For an IaaS cloud, this means it provides both storage and compute, in ways that make them most efficient and useful.
Today, there tends to be a focus on the higher-level platform services, such as machine learning, databases, serverless, etc. In fact, the larger IaaS players now put 5-10 services per week into their cloud services catalog and most of these services have little to do with storage or compute...Continue reading
Five questions CFOs should ask about their organization’s cloud strategy
July 10, 2018
A blog post by John Tweardy, principal and technology strategy and business transformation leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP
The move to the cloud is in full swing—and as compelling as its benefits are, cloud computing raises important issues related to financial reporting and disclosure. CFOs have the opportunity to bring their insights to bear these issues and key considerations of cloud computing.
Last month, Gartner Group released its annual forecast of the worldwide public cloud market. The research firm expects revenue to grow more than 21 percent this year, but then stabilize as cloud cements its status as an information technology services standard...Continue reading
Picking an IaaS provider? Three issues to consider
July 3, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
Data centers leveraged all sorts of brands and types of hardware and software systems, which hedged your bets. With a public cloud provider, you put all of your eggs into a single basket.
The wrong decision could cost your company millions of dollars, and, perhaps worse, delay the leveraging of some very strategically important technology. Don’t worry, help is at hand. Here are three core issues to consider when picking an IaaS public cloud provider...Continue reading
Exploring the role of microservices in containerization
June 28, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP
A microservice comprises small, independent processes that communicate using language-agnostic application programming interfaces (APIs). Both an architectural pattern and a mechanism, microservices are created by decomposing an application to the functional primitive and reconstructing it.
As the application is rebuilt for the cloud, it can be modified to expose services that are accessible by other applications. Functionality doesn’t have to be built from scratch because the originating and other applications can consume services from the rebuilt version...Continue reading
Bringing containers and clouds together
June 26, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
It’s hard to blame anyone for the platform lock-in that afflicts cloud computing. Heavy demand for public and private cloud services, including software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) deployments, has long kept portability on the backburner for platform providers. Things are heating up, though, in containers.
An old approach finding new uses, containers, together with container cluster managers, such as Google’s Kubernetes, offer a common abstraction layer. Applications can be localized within a container and then ported to other public and private cloud providers...Continue reading
Are you ready for cloud service governance?
June 21, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Governance could be the most overlooked aspect of cloud computing, perhaps because it’s so complex. There is cost governance to monitor and control cloud cost usage. There is resource governance to control the cloud resources, both single and multicloud. Finally, there is cloud service governance which includes the practices and technology that deal with cloud APIs or web services that come standard with the cloud provider’s services, or perhaps from services you build and expose on the cloud.
The need is pretty clear. Services are abstracted and leveraged by application workloads. These can be infrastructure services that are part of the cloud provider’s services, such as storage and compute. Or, they may be purpose-built services, such as the calculation of a tax rate...Continue reading
Why cloud security automation is key
June 19, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Dads say this all of the time, “A good offense is a good defense.” What does that mean when we talk about cloud?
To me, it means that people try to be proactive, which includes actively looking to spot minor issues and resolve them before they become real issues. Specific to the world of cloud computing, this means that we keep tabs on operations issues, such as security breaches, and address those issues as soon as we see them.
This is not the norm today. People tend to be very reactive when it comes to security, even cloud computing security. While there are typically plans in place to deal with breaches, there aren’t always plans to proactively monitor for attacks...Continue reading
Three things that could destroy your cloud migration project
June 14, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
1. Lack of talent
Perhaps the biggest issue with cloud migration is the lack of talent you need to get things done the right way…on schedule and on time. The truth of the matter is that existing IT staffers often don’t yet understand much about cloud. Sure, they may understand storage and compute, but the public consumption models that cloud supports require very different thinking about how the models are allocated, implemented, provisioned, and operated...Continue reading
Why go cloud-native?
June 12, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
The benefits of implementing cloud-native features typically include the following:
- Performance. You’ll typically be able to access native features of the public cloud services to provide better performance than is possible with non-native features. For example, you can deal with an I/O system that works with auto-scaling and load-balancing features.
- Efficiency. Cloud-native applications’ use of cloud-native features and application programming interfaces (APIs) should provide more efficient use of underlying resources. That can translate to better performance and/or lower operating costs.
- Cost. More efficient applications typically cost less to run. Most cloud providers send you a monthly bill based upon the number of resources consumed, so if you can do more with less, you save on dollars spent.
- Scalability. Because you write the application to the native cloud interfaces, you also have direct access to the auto-scaling and load-balancing features of the cloud platform.
The price you pay for these capabilities is portability. Applications that are localized for specific cloud platforms are not easily ported to other cloud platforms. Doing so tends to take a lot of... Continue reading
Clearing skies for women in cloud
A blog post by Christina Bieniek, principal, US retail & distribution consulting leader, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Time and again, studies have shown us the business benefits of gender diversity and a culture of inclusion. Companies need both to be successful: Diversity gives women a seat at the table, and inclusion gives them a voice there.Time and again, studies have shown us the business benefits of gender diversity and a culture of inclusion. Companies need both to be successful: Diversity gives women a seat at the table, and inclusion gives them a voice there. The presence of women in leadership positions correlates with improved financial performance, team dynamics, and productivity. Technology teams that are more gender-diverse are better at solving problems, adhering to project schedules, and keeping project costs down...Continue reading
Auto scaling on AWS helps eliminate the need for SAP S/4HANA application server sizing
June 5, 2018
A blog post by Tita Venatius, senior manager, Deloitte Consulting LLP; Rahul Kabra, partner solutions architect, AWS; Naresh Pasumarthy, partner solutions architect, AWS.
Introduction
Many enterprise organizations rely heavily on SAP mission-critical applications to drive revenue and gain competitive advantage in the marketplace, but facilitating high-efficiency performance of these applications across the IT landscape is critical to achieving the expected results. Thus, organizations running SAP applications should make sure the infrastructure it runs on is elastic and can scale based on demand fluctuations to help optimize performance efficiency...Continue reading
Cloud complexity hinders some enterprise adoption
May 21, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
There are a few key issues that I see in the market today:
- Most enterprise adoption takes place around an existing business problem, with a clear business case. Enterprises do not adopt cloud computing because it’s trendy, they need to solve real problems right out of the gate.
- Most enterprise adoption involves existing application migration rather than new application development. Most enterprises that migrate applications try to do so as quickly as possible, and do not focus on “refactoring” applications to make more efficient use of native cloud services...Continue reading
Why some people don’t care about SaaS, but should
April 24, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Thousands of SaaS applications are now available from providers as diverse as familiar tech giants to startups that may do something as niche-y as bail bonds management. Indeed, the SaaS segment holds nearly 69 percent of overall public cloud market share, but its year-over-year growth rate of 22.9 percent is the slowest of the three primary segments...Continue reading
Cloud security leading practices and technologies
April 19, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
The rise of cloud computing led us to rethink approaches to security for cloud and non-cloud systems. Because of the complex and distributed nature of cloud-based platforms, security approaches that leverage identity seem to be the best fit. This is a fundamental shift in both security planning and technology. Enterprises will likely need to ‘feel the pain’ before they can ‘understand the gain.’
Enterprises typically fall down by not understanding their own security requirements and issues before they create an approach, a design, and then select the right identity and access management (IAM) technology solution. IAM technologies, as listed below, all have their own approach to IAM. This includes those that are focused on cloud computing...Continue reading
Three emerging multicloud leading practices you can use today
April 17, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Indeed, as multicloud becomes the norm, more and more enterprises struggle with the challenges that arise from the use of more than a single set of native cloud services, not to mention the management challenges of their existing on-premises systems.
People have their own ideas about how to address their requirements and those ideas often include tossing money and tools at the problem. The good news is that some emerging leading practices are showing to be effective paths to success, from both a business and technology perspective. Here are three leading practices you should consider if multicloud is in your future...Continue reading
Refactoring applications for containers and microservices
April 13, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
The process of containerizing an application and service-enabling it at the same time is more art than science at this point. However, certain success patterns are beginning to emerge as enterprises start to migrate legacy applications to the cloud using containers and service-orientation as the architecture.
Truth-be-told, security is all or nothing. Either you have all of the doors locked, or they might as well be unlocked. Cloud security is only as strong as the weakest link. This causes vulnerabilities that can be exploited by hackers to cause breaches—and subsequent negative news coverage...Continue reading
Why cloud security should be systemic, and is often not
April 10, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
I’m frequently reminded of the need for cloud security, but often taken aback by how many people don’t really understand exactly what it is. More troubling is how many lack an understanding of its role within cloud computing and everything else connected to the public cloud that hosts corporate workloads, including traditional systems....Continue reading
Clearing the air around cloud shared responsibility models
April 6, 2018
A blog post by Mike Kavis, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Differences between cloud service models
It is critical to understand the differences between Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Each service model provides a level of abstraction that comes with its own shared responsibility model. In my book, Architecting the Cloud, I use the following images to show the respective responsibilities of CSPs and customers...Continue reading
The cloud is changing IT skills
April 6, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Today in the US, 3.9 million jobs are associated with cloud computing with 384,478 of them in IT, according to Forbes.1 The median salary for IT professionals with cloud computing experience is $90,950.2 Worldwide, there are currently 18,239,258 jobs associated with cloud computing...Continue reading
Understanding GDPR and cloud computing
April 5, 2018
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
As enterprises embrace public clouds, and thus store data in diverse environments, there is a need to understand the regulatory and legal considerations of each aspect. So, what do you need to know?...Continue reading
Does cloud complexity make us unsecure?
A blog post by David Linthicum, managing director, chief cloud strategy officer, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Multiclouds are all the rage these days. They provide the ultimate in enterprise flexibility by allowing you to mix and match cloud services to meet the exact needs of the business. Thus cloud use supports business agility and operational cost efficiency. But are there any downsides?...Continue reading
The cloud’s lock-in vs. agility trade-off
A blog post by Mike Kavis, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP.
Many enterprises have the proverbial bad taste in their mouths from years of vendor lock-in on mainframes and database technologies. As they look to the cloud, they don’t want to fall into the same trap. Meanwhile, some cloud service providers (CSPs) are offering a suite of proprietary application programming interfaces...Continue reading
How much do risk and compliance teams impact your cloud architecture?
A blog post by Mike Kavis, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP
A common pattern I see in heavily regulated industries is that the risk and compliance teams are dictating technology decisions. This ranges from determining which cloud provider (if any) can be chosen to what tools and processes must be used. This can pose challenges because technology decisions...Continue reading
DevOps–shift everything left
A blog post by Mike Kavis, chief cloud architect, Deloitte Consulting LLP
DevOps has always been about removing bottlenecks from the software development lifecycle (SDLC). In the early days of DevOps, the biggest bottleneck that attracted the most focus was infrastructure. Developers and operators worked closely together to automate infrastructure, both on-premise
What will drive more investment firms to the cloud?
February 28, 2018
A blog post by Doug Dannemiller, Investment Management research leader, Deloitte Services LP.
Firms are now much more focused on the customer experience and the investor’s outcome, rather than investing in their proprietary infrastructure. To be sure, IM firms protect and value their core intellectual properties, such as their investment decision process. Even with protection of the secret sauce in mind, firms are starting to use cloud-based applications for differentiating processes, but there is clearly a distribution...Continue reading