McGinnis also recommends encouraging cloud developer teams to explore and innovate within a safe framework. “Activities such as immersion days, hackathons, and innovation days can all foster leadership opportunities and contribute to a vibrant community culture.”

2. Rethinking strategies to rein in costs and target benefits

Cloud market innovations, particularly those enabled by AI, are outpacing actual demand, says Anay Nawathe, a director with technology research and advisory firm ISG. “As a result, many CIOs now feel overwhelmed by a multitude of choices, experience fear of missing out, and make hasty, suboptimal cloud decisions.”

The scope of cloud strategies has expanded significantly over the past several years, Nawathe observes. “Once a purely infrastructure-driven exercise, cloud services have rapidly moved up the technology stack to the data and application layers, incorporating all infrastructure across enterprise private clouds, multiple public clouds, and at the edge,” he says. “Yet not every application and data workload belongs in the public cloud, and enterprises need to ensure they are deploying these workloads in the right manner.”

The best way to approach today’s cloud market is through intentional, use-case-driven cloud investments, Nawathe says. “This requires enterprises to understand their individual application strategies, and to use that understanding to build a cloud ecosystem and supporting capabilities that will empower application teams to run at the pace they need while managing costs and risk.” Meanwhile, he adds, an increased focus on governance to provide the guidelines and guardrails for applications teams is critical for successful implementation.

Unlike past strategies, which prioritized rapid cloud growth for the sake of innovation, the current approach emphasizes financial rigor and technical due diligence. “A requirement to develop a comprehensive total cost of ownership and return on investment analysis, prior to making cloud investments, not only allows enterprises to manage their budgets, but it also requires application teams to clearly articulate their requirements and establish a strategy for successfully adopting new technologies,” Nawathe says.

3. Partnering for innovation

Accenture’s Tay says CIOs should leverage cloud partners to their strategic advantage. “Hyperscalers and other emerging ecosystem providers are investing heavily in innovation and advanced technologies, including generative AI tools and capabilities that can massively accelerate modernization,” he observes. Bringing in trusted modernization partners is a pro move, Tay suggests. “These experts will help guide decisions and infuse modern practices across every step of the cloud and digital core journey.”