to better visibility and overall program transparency,
the leaders are more aware of what’s happening in
their environment. They’re simply more sophisti-
cated, which causes them to be more realistic about
the extent to which their business is exposed to risk.
This may be why they are so skilled at fast risk mitiga-
tion, recognizing the need to quickly contain and
address the threat before it can do harm. Enterprises should leverage the study findings for
personal gain, not as a way to determine whether
they fall into the laggards or leaders camp. To that
end, here are our recommendations on how to
develop a better, more impactful cloud program.
Conclusion Assigning a “cloud steward” goes a long way towards
ensuring accountability across the organization. This
person is not simply a figurehead — they must have an
intimate knowledge of the technology at play and the
business as a whole.
1
Secrets of the Cloud Leaders: Winter 2018 shows that
certain organizations — cloud leaders — are achieving
substantially better outcomes from their cloud
deployments, driven largely by having greater visibil-
ity, efficiency and control. These practices pay off in
spades: cloud leaders see greater revenue impact,
enjoy a competitive advantage over their peers, and
are more adept at mitigating risk.
As stated in the Introduction, the leaders/laggards
divide is intended to help extrapolate findings from
the data, not to act as a ranking system. If anything,
the study — along with the focus groups — reaffirms
that, simply put, this is hard. Not even cloud leaders
have it completely figured out; many businesses the
world over struggle with the same set of challenges.
80 | THE DOPPLER | SPRING 2018
Designate Responsibility and
Empower Ownership
In the focus groups, almost all the leaders had either
an individual or a team responsible for defining and
enforcing cloud best practices, pushing for continu-
ous optimization and driving smart growth.
2
Benchmark and Continuously Optimize
How does cloud performance compare to last month?
Last year? What about KPIs, such as cost, adoption or
security?
Cloud leaders set metrics and track progress against
them for continuous optimization. They showed an