Falling out of love with the Cloud? 5 top tips to bring back the romance

For upon |Cloud computing has really taken off in the past 10 years, but software vendors have complicated relationships with businesses. Here’s 5 ways to get it back on track.

Relationships are difficult. It doesn’t matter whether you are single, dating, in a committed partnership or married, they all take work, understanding, honesty and trust.

And I’m sure many of you have gotten your hearts broken. You meet someone new. You fall in love. You enjoy the chemistry and you share common goals. But then the cracks appear. One or both parties feel that they are not getting what they have invested into the relationship. You fall out of love. You part ways.

Parting ways is painful. Full stop. Reflecting on technology and on the mass migration to Cloud over the past few years, I sense that a similar pattern is emerging. Now, before you roll your eyes, bear with me …

Cloud computing has really taken off in the past 10 years. Even though pioneers like Salesforce had a Cloud offering way back in 1999, it has still needed time to gain traction. Like so many love stories, the promise of a better tomorrow, with a trusted partner with whom you could grow and prosper together was an alluring proposition. I could understand why. Companies no longer needed astronomical budgets for expensive data centres. They didn’t need to buy and hold thousands of licenses, they could just consume what they needed. They didn’t need to contend with complex and unfavourable contracts. And the best part of all, was that moving to a subscription-based licensing model meant that this was no longer a capital expenditure but an operational expense. No depreciation choking your operational budget every year. Good times!

And vendors loved this model too. Why sell into a company once, when they could get recurring revenues? Why go through the expensive process of acquiring a customer only to re-acquire them again in the future? Why not grow a relationship with the customers they have already acquired and sell more products and services to them? Certainly a “win-win” model then. This was the rose tainted glasses through which both partners viewed each other. And the love grew …

Slowly, one partner lowered their defences and let the other in. Faced with reduced budgets and pressure to do more with less, the migration to Cloud gathered steam. “On premise” became a dirty word and Cloud was the new normal. Marriages were bound in multi-year subscription contracts. And for a time, business was bliss.

But slowly, I sense that the cracks have started to appear in these relationships. It started with the notion of flexible contracts and a “pay-as-you-go” model. With little understanding of the some of the complex terms and conditions and lengthy contractual tie-ins, indiscriminate ordering practices resulted in a surplus of unused licenses lying on the shelf. Poor understanding of adoption and how to use these tools further compounded the problem.

Contract terms and tie-ins became more complex. Vendors created more innovative ways of charging for their “add-on” products further complicating the landscape. Armed with the knowledge that, in some instances, there were no viable alternatives and even if there were, that jumping off one solution provider to another would be time-consuming and costly, vendors knew they had a captive audience. After all, dating is much cheaper than divorce!

Fast forward to today and I believe this is where most many companies find themselves. The love has eroded. So too, has the trust and honesty. Vendors have grown powerful during this time and their customers tend to be at their mercy. With little room to manoeuvre, where do you go?

In my previous life, I have been here. My advice is to take back control of your destiny.

1. Having a clear overview of your software estate and what you are currently paying for, together with what you will be paying for tomorrow is going to be crucial. Money saved today is going to subsidise more of what you should be doing to grow sales and reduce costs. Don’t leave it for someone else to sort out. Commit to doing something about it.
2. Centralise your Software decision making processes and license approvals. Appoint one controller/custodian who approves license purchases by reviewing and understanding the implications of a multi-year commitment. This might create a bottleneck in the short term, but this is short term sacrifice for a long-term reward.
3. Use a tool to manage subscription-based spend. I previously did all of this on a spreadsheet and, while it resulted in increased visibility, the volume and complexity of terms and providers made this impossible to manage effectively without a robust tool. With hyper-specialisation of products shortly becoming the norm, this problem will only get worse.
4. Don’t buy a screw-driver to tighten a nut. There is a myriad of tools out there who claim to support Cloud spend. Most have grown up in a different era. Choose the right provider –  one who understands Cloud as a different beast to “on premise” spend.
5. Don’t underestimate the potential savings. Tightening up on how you manage your cloud investment/estate means $millions in savings.

There are many stories in the industry today about Cloud vendors and what the real cost of moving to Cloud is. Like many things, it is difficult to quantify accurately. With a little patience and diligence, maybe before you get to the painful process of divorce, you regain some of the power in the relationship. After all, it is truly as equals that a loving relationship can blossom.