Moving or not moving to the cloud is a question for which a CTO needs to have an answer. For most CTO, the answer is a definite “yes”; the technical reasons are overwhelming. Yet as we know technology is complicated to explain to non-tech, and the fact that moving to the cloud includes a paradigm shift on money management (e.g. CAPEX vs OPEX) makes it hard to get the CFO on your side.
You may remember from a past analogy between a leader and an orchestra director I love analogies and I found the right analogy to help to push the move to the cloud towards a cleared YES.
Analogy
Data is the new gold, and is moving towards becoming a money on its own (contact me if you want to talk about this). So it is easy to draw the connection with the XVI century and the creation of banks.
Keeping your data in your datacentres is like having your money under the mattress, it works until it doesn’t, and then the impact can be catastrophic. Moving the money in a bank allow for more protection, managed by the scale of use. AWS datacentres are very probably better protected than yours, the impact of a breach would cost billions, and so AWS can spend 10 of millions to make sure this does not happen.
The analogy also helps imagine a future where new products, like insurance, loans with interests of data, like the financial system today.
Don’t keep it under the mattress; place it in a safe.