Best practices for cloud consulting: from overall strategy to attention for detail

Do you know that the average person uses 36 cloud-based services every single day? Many businesses have naturally moved or are considering cloud computing for benefits like efficiency, knowledge, enhanced security, and reduced costs. So, there’s no denying that cloud computing has completely changed our lives and the way we conduct businesses.

Still, many organizations get overwhelmed by the challenges lying ahead. Those challenges mainly include incompatibility issues, security risks, lack of expertise, and governance & compliance issues. And to tackle those challenges, the demand for cloud consulting services has grown dramatically; the global cloud infrastructure services spending increased to $55 billion in Q1 2022.

The cloud consulting market is projected to reach $22 billion by 2022. However, as important as technical capabilities are skills necessary to work effectively with your clients. Here are seven must-know best practices for cloud consultants:

1. Start with a Strategy

This is where you and your team begin to outline a plan. You need to understand what the goals of your business are, who your target audience is and what you intend on selling them. Once these things are defined, you can move on to developing your brand. Branding is an important part of any business’s foundation because it helps define who you are and how others see you. In addition to this, it helps guide decision-making by giving employees something they can refer back to when making decisions that may affect how customers view their company as a whole (i.e. if something goes wrong).

• Define Your Target Audience: Who is going to be buying from me? What do they look like? How old are they? What gender do I want my brand to appeal to? These questions will help shape where we go from here with our marketing strategy for targeting this particular demographic group.
• Define Your Product Or Service: This one seems pretty obvious but there’s more to defining your product than just saying “I’m selling fruit.” You need specific details about what kinds of fruits or vegetables; whether its organic vs conventional; how much does each type cost per pound; etc…The better defined this information becomes now than later down the road when someone starts asking questions about why things aren’t working out quite right in terms of sales success rates etc…You’ll have answers ready at hand instead of scrambling around trying to figure out why certain tactics aren’t working anymore!

2. Be Patient

Cloud consulting is a long-term game. It takes time to build a successful cloud consulting business, team and practice. It also takes time to create a client base that attracts the right clients and projects for your business. Because of this, any cloud consultant who tells you they’ve hit their stride in six months or less is most likely lying through their teeth (or at least not telling you the whole truth).

3. Be Prepared for Growing Pains

Cloud consulting is an exciting and growing industry with a lot of potential. As the cloud continues to evolve and grow, it will create new problems that you need to be prepared for. The cloud is still a relatively new technology, so it’s best not to expect everything will go smoothly from day one.

4. Testing, testing and more testing

Testing is the most important aspect of the whole process. You can have a great team, but without proper testing, you will not be able to deliver quality products. Testing your applications on different platforms is just as important as testing them in different environments and browsers. Mobile devices are becoming more and more popular, so we might want to test our applications on various mobile devices as well. There are also many operating systems that need to be taken into consideration when you do your development work. For instance, if you are developing an application for Windows and Mac OS X users only (or vice versa), then make sure that your product works smoothly under both operating systems and does not crash at any point during its usage.

5. Focus on automation

The most important thing a cloud consultant can do to improve their business is to automate processes. Automation will help you scale your business, reduce errors, cut costs and improve customer experience. Automation helps you scale by enabling your employees to focus on higher-value tasks that require more specialized knowledge or skill. It also allows you to provide better service at a lower cost because it reduces the need for manual work that takes up time and resources. Improving customer service is one of the keys to being successful as a consulting firm; however, this can be difficult when customer satisfaction depends on the availability of human resources with expertise in certain areas such as compliance or security. With automation tools like Zapier automating repetitive tasks like sending out invoices after each project ends automatically so there’s no need for manual labor which frees up staff members who are better suited at providing value through other means (such as analyzing data or developing new products/services).

6. Cloud consulting is in high demand

Cloud consulting is the perfect career if you’re looking to learn new skills, earn money and build respect. Cloud consulting is in high demand right now. In fact, according to Glassdoor’s Best Jobs 2019 report, Cloud Solutions Architect was one of the top jobs with a median base salary of $100K per year.If you want to become a cloud consultant, there are two main types: technical and business-focused. Technical consultants will work on projects related specifically to cloud technologies like AWS or Azure while business consultants may help clients understand how their organization can benefit from moving some workloads off-premises into the public cloud or private cloud.

7. Have eye for detail

People who do well in cloud consulting have an eye for detail, love to solve problems and enjoy building new relationships.

• You need to be detail-oriented. If you can’t handle the small stuff, it’s not going to work.
• You need to be able to solve problems and troubleshoot problems quickly. You will get asked a lot of questions, so being able to come up with an answer right away is key.
• You need good communication skills that allow for building relationships with new people and vendors/partners in your industry as well as existing customers who may have been with your company for years, if not decades!
• Learning new things shouldn’t scare you-it should excite you! The more you know about different technologies and tools available today, the better equipped you will be when someone comes along with an idea they want to be implemented but aren’t sure how yet.

Conclusion

Cloud consulting is a great niche to be in right now as more companies are looking for ways to reduce costs and increase efficiency. This can be done through the use of technologies like virtualization or containerization, which allow you to run multiple applications on one server instead of just one application per server. The best part about cloud consulting services is that they provide flexibility so that you can tailor your services based on what works best for your client’s needs without losing any functionality.