| |October 201819CIOReviewpapers and ring tones. This enables organizations to meet their specific business needs and easily upgrade the software, something that was impossible in the legacy world of highly bespoke software applications. For companies that want to go one step further, Platform cloud empowers companies to extend their cloud applications to make them `best' fit their business, giving added deployment, integration, business process management and security capabilities, as well as enabling mobile application development, content development or digital engagement strategies. The third cloud journey is with Infra-structure-as-a-Service (IaaS).While SaaS brings in new features and functionality, IaaS is about hosting your existing appli-cations in the cloud, significantly reducing the effort, expertise, and expense required to own and run infrastructure. A typical starting point is with test and develop-ment environments, as they enable you to dip a toe in the water with-out touching mission critical enterprise systems. The long game for many is to eventually move production and high availability zones to the cloud.Organizations not yet ready for the public cloud can start by consolidating and virtualizing their legacy systems. This can be done in stages. Companies have the option of using `cloud ready' converged infrastructure, that comes `in a box', removing the need to buy, integrate and run separate servers, storage and networking. This can be operated either in a traditional way in the company's own data centre, or setup as a private cloud. In addition, increasingly there are options offered where companies can buy in to options that enable them to run the public cloud from behind the firewall in their own data centre as well. They can decide the journey based on the persona and requirements. This is the fourth model that companies can choose when migrating t o the cloud.Even the most advanced cloud adopters typically do not make a com-plete shift. Every en-terprise has multiple systems on-premises at different stages of their lifecycle. For most there will be an extensive period of co-existence, with appli-cations and data living in both on-premises and cloud environments. Just moving everything to the cloud would reduce the value of rather large investments made into on-premises systems, both of hardware and software. Add to this various regulatory/compliance requirements that dictate where and how data can be located. Therefore, a typical cloud strategy will need to include both new cloud services and legacy on-premises environments, public, private and most likely hybrid cloud approaches, new innovations, with the ability for existing business processes to coexist. For this reason, the hybrid approach, is gaining popularity, and is ex-pected to be the dominant approach by companies in cloud for some time. Every enterprise is different. Every cloud journey will be tooAs organizations step up focus on transformation and innovation, successfully orchestrating IT modernization with cloud as the beachhead will be the key. A unified cloud vision that fully aligns with your organization's business plans helps set the right context for your cloud journey. As organizations step up focus on transformation and innovation, successfully orchestrating IT modernization with cloud as the beachhead will be the key 0:00/2:56
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