CLOUD – THE NEW CHEESE

Humans do not like change, because at the very root of our existence, like animals, we want to adapt to our environment and thrive in it for as long as we can. The complexity of human life simply does not allow us to enjoy the same type of consistency and stability as animal life.

The fable by Spencer Johnson: Who Moved My Cheese? (1998), captures that moment when we realise the world of technology is constantly changing, and we are afraid to adapt or change along with it because of our truest nature.

The story involves four characters who live in a maze and are happily thriving because they have found a huge source of their favourite food, cheese. Two of the characters have built their lives around the big cheese and, when it disappears, feel they are the victim of fraud or theft. They cling to their loss and inevitably go hungry. Meanwhile, the other two quickly accept the loss and move on to find new cheese.

Johnson's message is, for some, the future only holds fear and all good things were in the past, but instead of seeing change as the end of something, we must learn to see it as a beginning. The same applies to the adaptation to cloud. Enterprise IT is still a little suspicious of the lack of control cloud represents. But like the characters in Johnson's book, it is time to embrace the change. In fact, there are many benefits involved in moving to the cloud.

By using cloud applications, you benefit from many cloud products, lower cost, improved security and management controls allowing you to streamline business and increase profitability.

Changing to the cloud will free up your IT department, giving them a new lease on life, like delivering more efficiently, being more agile and reducing the costs incurred for IT, who can now spend more money on building a better customer experience.

"If you do not change, you can become extinct"

As an acceptation of the reality one of the characters in Johnson's book writes this on the wall of the maze: "If you do not change, you can become extinct." In business terms, this means: If you don’t learn to adapt to change, your company will not grow.

The characters in the book who accepted the change didn't overanalyse or overcomplicate things. When the situation changed and the cheese was moved, they changed and moved with the cheese, and you need to do it too. ■