Motivation and Business Justification

The current strategy in the case company’s IT department is to move applications from the on-premise data center to a cloud environment. The strategy itself has pushed case company employees to consider cloud solutions. IT Architect (I1) and IT Service Owner (I6) stated how the main reasons for beginning the cloud journey were because of higher IT management and the overall strategy. Although the strategy has played its part in the decision to move to the cloud, it was evident that many other reasons also had a great effect on the decision to begin the cloud journey. Senior Manager, IT (I14) mentioned ease of use, flexible sourcing models, cost flexibility and scalability as business justifica-tions. IT Architect (I2) similarly identified various reasons:

The ability to replace CAPEX with OPEX. Scalability, and of course process wise it is simpler… The cost related aspects are a leading factor for us, and there are technical benefits as well. – IT Architect (I2)

The advantages of scalability were a common theme among interviewees. IT Service Owners (I6) and (I8), IT Architect (I2), Manager, IT & Digitalization (I11), Project Man-ager, IT (I13) and Senior ManMan-ager, IT (I14) all mentioned scalability as one of the reasons to move to the cloud. Especially when comparing on-premise and cloud options, the scalable and flexible nature of the cloud increases its attractiveness. Scalability has also been strongly evident when considering the applications characteristics and the potential benefits scalability brings cost wise:

For the third archive model, the aim is to get cost savings as the archive system is rarely used, so it would be built in a way that when the user wants to use it, the user starts up the servers and services in general, and in that way, it is a cost saving. – IT Architect (I1)

From a cost perspective we saw scalability as an opportunity to flexibly scale and turn things off. We could identify this as a good fit for our design software. – Project Manager, IT (I13)

Manager, IT & Digitalization (I11) mentioned how scalability is a central factor, as the size that their business will grow to in the near future is still unknown. IT Service Owner (I8) further identifies how scalability enables the ease of expanding resources on a need basis:

The cloud is more flexible than the on-premise environment. We started off with very minimal resources on our servers to keep our costs low… If we need to add capacity, the additions are only a few simple clicks away. – IT Service Owner (I8) The cost of the cloud in general and the cost savings enabled by the technological ca-pabilities of the cloud were mentioned in many of the interviews. IT Service Owner (I6) specifically stated that money and costs are drivers and constantly kept in mind. This however, was often identified as important, but not the main motivator. When asked about the importance of costs, IT Architect (I4) stated:

It is, but it is not the motivation. The motivation is agility. Well technology in gen-eral. So, I mean it is beginning to be more difficult to find vendors that do not work in clouds. IT is developing, this is the new modern way of doing things. – IT Archi-tect (I4)

Keeping up with technological advancements such as the cloud has been acknowledged as something that the IT department needs to primarily take care of. When specifically asked for business justifications, Senior Manager, IT (I14) mentioned how in principle it is not that relevant for the business whether the solution is on-premise or in the cloud. In other words, the technical journey may not be the main topic of interest for businesses, and therefore IT needs to consider the technical side of things. Oftentimes the targeted business outcomes are reached with modern technologies such as the cloud, as stated by Senior IT Architect (I7):

This project was primarily coming from IT, but of course even IT projects need to have some business justification. For the business the most important reason to go there was the performance…Then the other thing was the simplification of the landscape… We were also kind of promising business that the more you simplify the landscape the more robust it is. – Senior IT Architect (I7)

Similarity to I7, IT Service Owner (I9) highlighted performance and simplification of the whole architecture as the major expectations from the business and advantages of the

cloud. I9 also added, that in addition to business justifications, IT itself may run into a situation where IT justifications need to be analyzed:

IT side justification is that we had an ageing platform. The whole platform is close to 6 years old and nearing end of life, so we had to decide whether we renew the same on-premise type of platform again, or should we move with the future in mind to prepare ourselves for the cloud journey. – IT Service Owner (I9)

Nearing end of life was mentioned by a few interviewees as a turning point to shift appli-cations from on-premise environments to the cloud and modernize the way things are done. Modernizing the current environment was another major theme that was evident from the interviews. For IT Architect (I10) for instance, renewing the application and re-building its functionalities enabled the use of the application on a global scale. Globaliz-ing the application was a business case that could not be reached with the old software.

Moreover, Chief Architect (I3) discussed how there has been a vision to do things in a more modern way for a while, and how IT should be an enabler of agility. This has there-fore led to the increasing use of the cloud. IT Architect (I5) mentioned how moving to a cloud environment was a solution to simplify the deployment of mobile applications. I5 emphasized how a cloud environment facilitates the development and deployment of applications for vendors and developers, and how the simplification brings cost efficien-cies.

Furthermore, Senior Manager, IT (I12) discussed how the shift towards a cloud environ-ment is an investenviron-ment itself, that different areas of business can capitalize on:

IT justified the investment of the platform by stating that it increases the ability to use data and fosters the maturity of data. The benefits are not direct, instead they are indirect in a sense that we can offer businesses much better data skills and data technologies, which in turn enhances their data skills, and that way the busi-ness benefits are identified from the actual use cases. – Senior Manager, IT (I12)