Is your business considering making the journey to the cloud? Do you have questions and want to hear from other users? (And are you a Dilbert cartoon fan? Ok, you don’t have to be a Dilbert fan, but Sue Shaw of Sue Shaw Consulting and the leader of this webinar is. She peppers the webinar with the cartoon and a lighthearted manner in general.) This webinar is for those who are just beginning to evaluate the opportunity and those who have taken the first steps. Shaw, who has extensive experience as a cloud application evaluation specialist, keeps it casual and engages participants in sharing their experiences. Quest Customer Learning & Advocacy Team Members share frequently asked questions and concerns for Shaw to address.

The webinar is an entire hour of questions and answers you won’t want to miss. Use the Quest Content Library to access the entire webinar. A few of the questions and answers, though, are highlighted below.

What is Cloud?

Shaw reads the long formal definition then gives her own practical definition: Accessing applications and data anytime anywhere without having to know much about the underlying technology.

Do you have a Cloud strategy?

Ask yourself: Are your desired business outcomes clear? Do you have a good inventory of applications or internal services to review? Do you have top level support for your strategy?

Is it ok to baby step into the cloud or should you go through the “big bang”?

Participants during the live webinar talked about their experiences. Many seemed to be taking baby steps with the goal to “do all cloud.” They concurred that new companies should start in the cloud.

What goals are you trying to accomplish?

Shaw likes to answer a question by asking a question. She knows that each company will have a different journey to the cloud so questions are necessary.

What does your company need that cloud would enable? What is the trigger demanding the change? Do you need elasticity? Finding resources for a complicated infrastructure? Multiple disconnected systems? “These are all triggers that could prompt a cloud evaluation but your goal is to solve these.”

Shaw listed some of the benefits of the cloud that your business might be seeking:

• Implement best-practice business processes
• Exit the data-center business
• Increase the security around your applications
• Increase agility
• Access round-the-clock support
• Desire for modernization
• Save in costs

Is your company really ready for the cloud?

A culture change is required. Is your business office ready to change processes to match what the system provides? Are they willing to accept that they can’t do modifications? Are the many teams within your business collaborating on the move to the cloud?

Are the advantages the cloud offers important to your company?

One of the great cloud benefits is that it frees time from administration for innovation. Does your company value the opportunity for innovation? The cloud increases agility and lowers cost for businesses. Businesses pay only for what they use. Is this a format that works for your business? There are other benefits, too, like the ease of keeping current and security.

What businesses consider the disadvantages of the cloud primarily root in their loss of control. You have to keep this in mind when evaluating.

How do the pros and cons of Software as a Service weigh for your business?

• How important are these Cloud advantages to your business?
• Frequent updates with quick access to new functionality
• Alignment with vendors
• Crowd-sourced testing – bugs are found quickly
• Standardize and update business practices

Shaw continues the webinar with many, many questions. She looks with you at Data as a Service, training opportunities, access to a user community, the skillset of your own IT staff, disaster recovery, security and so much more. In addition, she asks you questions outside the functionality of the system such as the quality of the demo, mobility, desktop requirements. etc. She also helps you with the all-important process of contracting for the cloud and price structures for the cloud.

This webinar is rich with questions that will help your business begin to map your journey to the cloud. Grab a co-worker to two and listen to the video replay of the Cloud Evaluation – Questions You Should Ask webinar. If you want to learn other cloud information and see how your peers are connecting to the cloud, let’s network at COLLABORATE 18, April 22-26, 2018. Oracle Cloud Collaborate Conference content features a wide variety of education and networking opportunities selected by users like you, making it a very useful Oracle conference. More than 275 sessions covering Cloud, Big Data, Mobility, and security make this a valuable, jammed packed week to help you get the most out of your Oracle Cloud investment. Think collaborate 2018, which some call the Oracle collaborate cloud conference. Follow us for the latest news on Twitter at #c18lv.