BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here
Edit Story

Most Companies Embrace 'Cloud First,' But Getting There's A Journey

Oracle

The trend line toward cloud is unmistakable: Research firm IDC predicts that 70% of companies will embrace a “cloud first” strategy by 2016, up from 55% today.

But “cloud first” applies to new apps and new development. Many existing apps won’t move to the cloud for a decade or more, so cloud and on-premises apps will continue to coexist, though with increasingly sophisticated integration among them.

‘The journey to the cloud is becoming clearer to us. But it’s a long journey,” said Robert Mahowald, IDC vice president of cloud software, speaking at Oracle Cloud Day in Chicago this week.

Companies are on very different stages of the journey to the cloud—and many are just starting to craft the heavy-duty, run-the-business kind of integration they’ll need between newer cloud (and mobile) systems and their longstanding on-premises systems.

“It really is about building a bridge—a bridge takes you to both sides,” said Steve Daheb, senior vice president of Oracle Cloud. “This isn’t a one-way, dead-end street that says you have to do it this way, and it’s all cloud.”

Daheb kicked off Oracle Cloud Day in Chicago, the first of a series of one-day cloud events that will zigzag from L.A. to Seoul to Atlanta to London and on across the globe during the coming months.

The events offer four cloud-centric workshop tracks tuned to the needs of IT leaders, developers, line-of-business executives, and cloud builders.

Cloud Software Growing

Cloud software will grow at 22% while packaged apps will grow at 4%, IDC predicts. But again, that’s for new apps, replacement apps, and new development.

Business leaders will have to make critical decisions on IT management systems that will be needed to support the increasing levels of integration between existing on-premises apps and cloud instances. A hybrid strategy isn’t a single technology choice, it’s more a model for sourcing and managing a heterogeneous IT environment, Mahowald said.

“We think this [hybrid approach] is the predominant operational model that most organizations are going to be moving to,” Mahowald said. It’s a decision that will be made workload by workload, though, considering how much value comes from keeping it in house and how hard it will be to stand up the app, he said.

There’s going to be some pain along that journey, as many companies overestimate their cloud chops. Asked to self-rate their cloud prowess, 46% said they were capable of doing higher-end managing and optimization of cloud apps, while IDC’s assessment put only 31% at that level.

One problem is a major skills gap: IDC estimates that companies fall about 50% short in the skills needed to manage the shift to cloud.

Oracle Cloud Platform (PaaS) technologies such as Oracle Database Cloud Service can help in this transition because it offers the same Oracle Database technology that companies have on premises.

That enables companies to leverage the Oracle Database skills they already have, and lets IT teams move workloads from on-premises to cloud (and back if they want) without rewriting any code. Said Daheb, “Whichever way you’re coming at this, you should be able to have choice.”

Visit Oracle.com for more about Oracle Cloud: