The IT hero’s journey – embracing cloud change, challenges, and discovery

No doubt about it, it’s an exciting time to be working in the IT industry. I’m not just talking about employees of one of the many tech companies, such as Facebook, Google, or Amazon. IT teams around the world are part of a transformation that is turning entire industries into technology-first businesses.

Do you work in IT at an automotive company? Not anymore. You work at a technology company who sells a driving experience. What about healthcare? You guessed it – your company is a tech company who encourages patient-centered interactions for improved health.

To succeed in today’s digital world, every company must be a technology-first company who also specializes in another industry. Organizations everywhere are enhancing digital capabilities to improve customer experiences and accelerate revenue growth. That’s because businesses realize their long-term success depends on it.

A funny thing happened on the way to public cloud

As organizations travel the digital transformation road, they’ve encountered some unexpected twists and turns along the way. Many industry experts originally believed all applications, data, and infrastructure would end up in the public cloud. Yet that hasn’t happened.

Enterprises are now distributing workloadsacross a mix of on-premises and public clouds. Compliance, cost, performance, control, complexity of migration – all of these factors are playing a big role in the new trend of multi-cloud deployment.

Today, cloud isn’t a destination; it’s a new operating model. It no longer matters if IT places workloads in public clouds, private clouds, or a mix of the two; everyone expects the same thing: fast service delivery, operational simplicity, and optimization of costs.

Train your IT team to succeed on the frontlines of your digital transformation

Although technology transformations are nothing new, transformation to a cloud operating model has been especially disruptive for those working in IT. This new model is a completely different method of IT consumption, challenging existing roles and responsibilities.

Traditionally, IT provided the services that you now outsource to cloud providers. As your organization looks for new roles to meet this new digital reality, a slew of traditional central IT jobs are changing. To be successful, much of your current IT staff will have to learn new skills, new software, and new ways of doing things. If they embrace this challenge, they can become an IT hero in the digital transformation. IT leaders can help by encouraging learning and providing valuable resources.  

Simple solutions enable IT to become a digital transformation hero

The transformation to a cloud operating model presents yet another challenge for IT, as working with and managing a multi-cloud environment can be daunting. However, technology can make the complex simple.

Take the history of the car, for example. The first car built for the masses, the Model-T, must have seemed like a complex machine at the time. Today’s cars contain over 30,000 parts and numerous computing systems and are certainly more complex. Yet technology actually makes current driving simpler than driving that first Model-T.

In the same way, newly available tools now allow IT to manage a multi-cloud environment more simply. In order to achieve a successful cloud transformation, enterprises must adopt software-defined technologies and unify compute, storage, and networking to ensure simple-to-use, cost-effective, multi-cloud operations.

IT leaders can help by choosing technologies built for a simpler hybrid cloud experience

Inside the enterprise is a dedicated group of IT experts who are accepting the digital transformation challenge. As I mentioned above, the heroes of your IT team are the ones that are increasing their skills as they embrace a new cloud reality.

In addition to enabling learning of new skills, IT leaders can help these IT heroes by choosing technologies that make the transition simpler. The right technology will help IT implement a simplified hybrid cloud experience. This type of solution includes the following features:

• Speed, agility, cost profile, project governance, and control – all provided in a self-service model where IT and developers can compose the services they need in minutes.
• Template-driven catalogs for workloads, allowing IT to compose and scale private clouds without specialized skills.
• Open access to any toolset and freedom to innovate with any cloud.
• A consumption model where customers only pay for what they use – everything as a service.

Helping the enterprise with the IT hero’s journey

In literature, the hero’s journey involves adventure, crisis, learning, and finally victory – allowing the hero to return home transformed and triumphant. In real life, the IT hero’s journey can be equally successful. Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) is helping to transform businesses to become technology-first companies by working with IT leaders and IT heroes all over the world.

Let HPE help you simplify your hybrid cloud experience with modern technologies and software-defined solutions such as composable infrastructure, hyperconvergence, infrastructure management, and multi-cloud management. Additionally, Cloud Technology Partners (CTP), a HPE company,will work with your IT team to enhance learning, conquer cloud challenges, and accelerate your successful digital transformation.

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About Gary Thome

^{Gary Thome is the Vice President and Chief Technologist for the Software-Defined and Cloud Group at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). He is responsible for the technical and architectural directions of converged datacenter products and technologies. To read more articles from Gary, check out the HPE Shifting to Software-Defined blog.}