CIOs need to ask themselves whether they have the expertise to handle that infrastructure, he adds. Ultimately, “you have to make the best of what you’ve got,” he says.
Stay focused on fundamentals
Organizations may want to chase the shiny object, which is agentic AI right now, but IT leaders should focus on their infrastructure, management, and platform planning, Linthicum stresses.
“It’s not as fun,” he says, “but to do any AI within your environment, you have to solve those issues.”
The cloud enables a lot of architectural patterns, and that freedom will work against you if you don’t have guardrails, cautions Sweetwater’s Johnson. “Write the guidance document before you need it — not after you’ve already got five teams doing things five different ways.”
IT leaders also need to get ahead of tagging and cost visibility early, saying that it needs to be a first step, not a cleanup project. “If you can’t see your spend clearly from day one, you’re already behind,” he says.
A key step is to build an auditing program with solid controls around who can create production changes, Johnson says. “The blast radius of a bad change in the cloud is bigger and faster than most people expect, until they experience it.”
The skills question
The skills needed to operate a modern cloud environment are evolving faster than most internal teams can realistically keep up with, Basu says. As a result, International Seaways relies on specialized MSPs rather than trying to maintain deep in-house expertise across every domain.
“That gives us access to current capabilities without constantly retraining or rebuilding teams as the technology changes,” he explains. “The decisions that protected us in 2020 were made years before anyone realized how important they would become. Infrastructure strategy is always about preparing for a future that is not yet fully visible.”
The key is to make those decisions deliberately, with clear reasoning, rather than reacting under pressure later, he adds.
Build adaptable organizations
Edge computing is adding another layer of complexity, Johnson says. Leaders who navigate this effectively won’t be the ones who find the perfect architecture, he notes. “They’re the ones building organizations that can adapt quickly when the right answer changes tomorrow,” he says.
The real competitive advantage is not the cloud you picked, but how fast your team can learn and move, Johnson says.
Asked about other advice to make cloud less complicated, the CIOs offered the following:
- Treat your cloud architecture like a product, not a project. It needs ongoing ownership, not just implementation, Johnson stresses.
- Make sure you’re reviewing your decisions regularly. “The right call at year one often isn’t the right call at year three. Build in the checkpoints to revisit,” Johnson says.
- Tie every workload to a cost center. Basu has done this, and IT continuously reviews utilization and rightsizing rather than waiting for periodic audits.
- Data classification determines regional placement. Before any workload reaches production, ensure “Legal and Compliance are in that conversation from the start, not at the end,” Basu says.
- Create a cloud-ready solution. This can sometimes be less expensive and lower risk than lifting and shifting a heavily customized legacy environment, Basu says.
- Consolidation is a strategic choice, not a retreat. Fewer platforms, governed well, consistently outperform a fragmented multicloud estate, he says.
- Don’t underestimate the governance gap AI is opening. Build your AI governance layer now, before the debt accumulates, Basu says.
- Cloud strategy is not an IT architecture decision. The pandemic proved that it is a business resilience decision, Basu says. “The organizations that make the hard calls before the crisis arrives are the ones that come out intact.”
- Ensure cloud decisions are tied to measurable business outcomes. WHSmith’s Bellendir says IT is also investing heavily in integration architecture, cybersecurity controls, observability, and data governance to better support a hybrid ecosystem.
- Place greater emphasis on cloud cost governance and operational discipline. This will improve visibility into cloud usage and ensure that scaling AI, analytics, and digital initiatives remains financially sustainable over time, Bellendir says.
While no one can foresee whether cloud will grow less complicated down the road, organizations will continue to use it. “Cloud is no longer the future of IT — it’s the present,” says Sweetwater’s Johnson. “The conversation has shifted from ‘should we?’ to ‘how do we get better at it?’ That’s where I spend most of my time.”
This story originally appeared on CIO.
