Customers like Goldman Sachs, Johnson and amp; Johnson, Shell, Coca-Cola, Comcast, and a lot more have chosen AWS as their cloud service partner to improve operational efficiency, reduce business risks, and create new revenue opportunities. Well, that indeed is what every enterprise looks for, while moving from on-premise to a cloud platform.

Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS, states, “There are 4 key initiatives that determine whether an enterprise will be successful in the cloud.” Shedding light on these points is projected to share an illustrative difference between enterprises that have had a successful transition to the cloud and te ones that haven’t.

During AWS re:Invent, CEO Jassy also said, “Enterprises have to foster senior-level alignment, an aggressive top-down goal to move fast, put a training program into action, and resist the tendency to get bogged down if some workloads can’t be moved to the cloud.”

AWS has recognized that these 4 objectives are irreplaceable across enterprises, regardless of the industry size, industry type, technical expertise, or complexities.

Now it’s time to look at what these 4 key pillars are and how do they make a difference,

Management buy-in

Noticed as the primary pillar, alignment of the senior-level management and confidence in the transition is inevitable; else, it just won’t happen. So, if you don’t have the entire leadership convinced, chances of the move being a success are very faint.

Additionally, the executive buy-in demands a process to deal with issues that arise on a regular basis.

As CEO Andy Jassy added, “People wouldn’t necessarily guess that non-technical issues like senior leadership are oftentimes the most important parts of the transformation, but a lot of time it is.”

Speed matters

An aggressive top-down goal is a must to drive the enterprise to move at a faster rate than it traditionally would move otherwise. CEO Jassy also made a special mention of GE that has adopted this approach for their journey to the cloud.

Here is how GE did it

According to CEO Jassy, post some early denial from tech leaders at GE, the management deployed 42 applications in the cloud within 30 days. And over a short period of time, GE leaders aimed at a goal and moved several thousand applications to AWS. Alongside, GE also figured out the security, governance, and client services model during the same period.

The point here now is GE is about 3 quarters old in the cloud, and trust none of this was possible without a push from the upper management.

Don’t miss out on cloud training

Training is one such area that is often ignored when a company plans a transition to the cloud. Many a time, there are instances where people are very excited about moving to the cloud but neglect a very important aspect, i.e., training their employees for a smoother transition and success.

Stay focused. stay motivated

Here comes the last pillar, and it strongly advocates to remain focused and not get discouraged when certain applications give a tough time and seem difficult to be moved to the cloud. The trick is: successful organizations don’t give up soon if they do not find out a way to move their last workload.

As a solution, AWS helps businesses with in-depth portfolio analysis and categorizes applications under easy, medium-hard, and hardest to move categories. This is what gives businesses clarity that a large chunk of workload can be easily transitioned to the cloud.