There is a core dichotomy when a GSI has to find ways to fulfil the diverse and sometimes conflicting requirements of its customer, while also maintaining its own operational and financial viability.

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Organizations are embracing cloud technologies to drive innovation, efficiency, and agility. However, navigating cloud adoption and maximizing its benefits can be challenging, especially for global system integrators (GSI) with diverse customers and projects. This requires balancing external customer demands and internal organizational constraints.

The GSI must deeply understand its customers' businesses, challenges and goals, while aligning its own capabilities, processes and priorities to meet those needs profitably. This inherent tension is a key challenge the GSI organization faces in serving its customers effectively.

The "Cloud Advisory Way of Working" offers an approach to delivering cloud services within complex enterprises. An advisory approach is valuable when organizations aim to adopt cloud computing to enable their business objectives.

By using cloud advisory to align Business and technical strategies it creates its own motion to creating the required business outcomes.

A significant risk of not completing the comprehensive cloud advisory approach is the potential for the business to fall behind its competitors who are actively pursuing cloud transformation.

Organizations that are proactive in adopting cloud technologies and modernizing their operations can gain a significant advantage over their competitors. If a company fails to keep pace with the industry's cloud adoption efforts, it may find itself lagging behind in terms of agility, innovation, and the ability to respond to changing market demands.

Competitors that have successfully completed the cloud advisory process and implemented a well-aligned cloud strategy are likely to reap the benefits of improved operational efficiency, faster time-to-market, enhanced customer experiences, and the ability to rapidly scale. This can translate into increased market share, improved financial performance, and a stronger competitive position.

The risk of being outpaced by competitors who have embraced cloud-based technologies and modernization should be a key consideration for any organization contemplating its cloud advisory and adoption journey. By proactively engaging in this process, companies can position themselves as industry leaders, enhance their competitive edge, and secure their long-term viability in the market.

The complexity increases significantly when working with large enterprises and global system integrators (GSIs) compared to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). This blog focuses on the GSI perspective, considering the diverse stakeholders from both customer organizations and internal teams. The key emphasis must remain on the customer's business goals, deferring technology discussions until those objectives are finalized.

The complexity arises from multiple factors that require varying levels of attention based on the specific stakeholders and situations involved. As opportunities evolve, advisors must adapt their approach to maintain a clear business focus. Understanding each key stakeholder's digital quotient, which reflects their ability to think and operate with a cloud-native mindset, is crucial.

It's essential to comprehend the customer's business, goals, objectives, challenges, and end-customers. Technology has not yet entered the conversation – a key principle of this advisory approach. The goal is to understand the customer's world and the potential impact of change from their perspective.

Adapting and transforming includes being able to understand the customer journey, which can vary depending on the persona. CEOs, CIOs, CTO’s, CISOs, CIDOs, and CFOs often face different challenges, and GSIs must balance these challenges with their own, such as ensuring profitability, balancing internal and external demands, navigating complex organizational structures, and cross-selling and upselling services and solutions.

Using the advisory way of working and listening to the customer, you can build a view of their business strategy and potential compelling events, such as globalization and market expansion, regulatory changes, mergers and acquisitions, or changing workforce dynamics. The advisor then identifies the key stakeholders and understands these items in detail, along with their potential business impact.

Understanding the business impact and how it relates to revenue, achieving objectives, and risk profile is key to linking the business strategy to the technical strategy. The advisor can then create a roadmap that enables the business to enact change and execute its strategies.

Having a business strategy that has clear links to the technical and cloud strategies is the fundamental goal of the advisory way of working. Aligning these strategies will provide key outcomes such as improved business agility, IT modernization, innovation, sustainability, and cost savings.

The roadmap of adoption ensures a cohesive business and technical strategy that helps a company respond to events, enter new markets, meet customer demand, and deploy products. The strategic view ensures the business stays on track to achieve objectives, adapting as needed.

The advisory approach to working with GSIs and enterprises requires a deep understanding of the customer's business goals, stakeholders, and potential compelling events that drive change. By aligning the business and technical strategies, advisors can create a roadmap that enables organizations to adapt and transform, ultimately achieving improved agility, innovation, sustainability, and cost savings.

The key areas to be focused on include business strategy, technical strategy (encompassing data and application strategies), the business case for cloud, the impact on governance models, and the impact on operating models.

In terms of business strategy, the advisory services would focus on understanding the customer's overall business objectives and aligning the cloud strategy to support those goals. The technical strategy would involve assessing the customer's data landscape and identifying opportunities to leverage cloud for data management, storage, and analytics, as well as evaluating the existing application portfolio and designing a cloud-native architecture.

The business case for cloud would be a critical component, where the advisory team would develop a compelling justification for the customer to adopt cloud computing, quantifying the potential benefits such as cost savings, agility, scalability, and innovation.

Governance model impact would also be a key consideration, as the advisory team would assess the implications of cloud adoption on the customer's existing risk management, compliance, and security frameworks, and recommend changes to ensure effective cloud management and control.

Finally, the operating model impact would be evaluated, where the advisory team would examine the customers current operating model and identify the changes required to support cloud-based service delivery, including adjustments to organizational structure, processes, roles, and responsibilities.

The discovery and assessment phase should begin by gathering and analysing the artifacts related to the customer's business strategy, data landscape, and application portfolio. The strategy and planning phase should then utilize the business case artifacts to build a compelling value proposition for cloud adoption.

The implementation and transition phase should involve establishing a governance framework, implementing changes to the operating model, and executing the cloud migration and deployment activities. The optimization and continuous improvement phase should involve regularly reviewing the cloud adoption roadmap and adjusting it based on changing business needs, technology advancements, and emerging best practices.

One key best practice is the importance of aligning the cloud strategy with the broader business objectives. This ensures that the cloud adoption roadmap supports the organization's strategic goals and drives measurable value.

Another important consideration is the cloud adoption framework. Industry leaders like Amazon Web Services (AWS) offer comprehensive frameworks, such as the AWS Cloud Adoption Framework, which helps organizations assess their cloud readiness, identify gaps, and develop a structured approach to cloud migration and management. The benefits of applying the Cloud Adoption Framework is that “it identifies four transformation domains (Technology, Process, Organization, and Product) that must participate in a successful digital transformation”.

In terms of data strategy, customers should explore how to effectively leverage data to provide significant benefits to a business. Using AWS prescriptive guidance will help align your data strategy to your business goals. Transitioning a company from basic data usage to becoming data-driven can be challenging, as it requires developing capabilities, processes, and roles over time.

For application strategy, AWS provides a range of managed services and prescriptive guidance on building a strategy of modernization. These services can help customers modernize their application architecture and take advantage of cloud-native capabilities.

When it comes to the business case for cloud, customers can leverage AWS tools like the AWS Pricing Calculator to estimate the potential cost savings compared to on-premises infrastructure. AWS also offers a comprehensive set of customer case studies and industry-specific solutions to help customers understand the real-world benefits of cloud adoption. The AWS Prescriptive Guidance document provides a comprehensive approach to implementing an application portfolio assessment strategy.

By incorporating these best practices and leveraging the extensive suite of AWS tools and frameworks, customers can make informed decisions about their cloud strategies and implementation, ultimately driving business transformation and unlocking the full potential of cloud computing.

The cloud advisory way of working highlights the critical importance of aligning business and technical strategies when helping customers navigate their cloud transformation journeys. By taking an advisory approach, global systems integrators can build a deep understanding of the customer's business goals, stakeholder needs, and potential compelling events that drive change.

The key is to start with the business strategy and then link it to the technical and cloud strategies, creating a comprehensive roadmap that enables organizations to adapt and transform. This requires a thorough assessment of the customer's current state, including their data landscape, application portfolio, governance models, and operating models.

The cloud advisory team can help customers make informed decisions, quantify the business case for cloud, and implement the necessary changes to their governance and operating models. Ultimately, the cloud advisory way of working empowers global systems integrators to become trusted advisors, guiding their customers through the complexities of cloud transformation and unlocking the full potential of cloud computing.