Every business has to decide for itself the best way to modernize data and what might is best suited to their environment. A recent article for Network World looked at what different corporations are willing to bring into a public cloud, and what some have left off. By deciding what does and doesn't need to be in the cloud, businesses will have an easier time with modernization because they will have a more specific plan of action.
One of the examples the article looks at is Family Dollar, which manages a hybrid approach to the cloud that tries to harness the best of both worlds. While it manages the company's core IT process on premises, less essential functions, like HR and management of the official website, are taken care of with cloud and web services. The CIO of Family Dollar, Josh Jewett, said that it prefers to stay on-premises with some of their IT because it saves them money.
HR in particular seems to be gaining ground as a popular choice for cloud migration. SAP's global and on-premise HR head Mike Ettling recently described how HR and the cloud are intertwined to analysts at an Amsterdam briefing, according to ComputerWeekly.
"If you look at the age of HR systems on-premise, the peak of innovation was five years ago," he said. "All the market dynamics indicate a massive move to HR in the cloud." He also adds that HR for small and medium businesses "is a market no-one has touched yet, which we are going to start addressing aggressively in 2015."
This is just one example: When your business looks more closely at its legacy applications, you will be able to decide which to dedicate cloud resources to.