Top 3 Pillars of cloud strategy

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When Covid-19 first hit, companies worldwide had to adapt rapidly. They were forced to launch expanded and new digital services almost overnight, accelerating the shift toward a hyperconnected world.

The cloud proved instrumental in supporting this transition throughout the pandemic. It enabled contactless commerce, remote working, agile business processes, and seamless digital engagement anytime, anywhere.

With no immediate return to offices on the horizon—PwC research indicates that 86% of UK CEOs anticipate a permanent shift to remote working—now is the ideal moment for businesses to take stock, reassess, and, where necessary, realign their cloud strategies. The goal: ensure long-term relevance, build resilience against future disruptions, and stay responsive to evolving customer needs.

Yet budgets remain under pressure. Gartner estimates that spending fell 7.3% in 2020, with the expectation that this trend will continue through 2026. In this environment, prioritising cloud strategy is essential.

Top 3 Pillars of Cloud Strategy for 2026

1. Facing Cloud Challenges Head-On

Cloud transformation is a journey, not a one-off project. Getting the foundations right from the start is critical.

Three core pillars stand out for building an effective cloud strategy: managing multi-cloud environments so they remain controlled and scalable; embracing cloud-native approaches to boost business agility and speed to market; and embedding security as a fundamental enabler across every layer of the strategy.

Multicloud

Connecting systems and people across digital touchpoints, multicloud enables on-demand delivery of end-user features, applications, and computing resources. It involves using public clouds from two or more providers, while hybrid cloud combines private and public clouds—often integrating fundamentally different delivery models.

Key drivers for adopting multicloud include leveraging the strengths of different platforms, separating data flows and critical functions across environments to enhance security, resilience, and efficiency, and ensuring regulatory compliance across regions such as GDPR and data sovereignty requirements.

Multicloud also improves customer experience and allows organisations to select services that best fit their needs at competitive price points. Adoption of hybrid and multicloud architectures is accelerating rapidly. However, IDC notes that not all companies are fully prepared to execute cloud strategies due to migration and skills-related challenges.

By 2026, IDC forecasts that more than 90% of global enterprises will rely on a combination of on-premises or dedicated private clouds, multiple public clouds, and legacy platforms to meet their infrastructure needs. Change is either underway or imminent.

With cloud playing an increasingly central role in long-term profitability and sustainability, a well-planned multicloud strategy is vital for improving efficiency, controlling costs, and accessing new technologies. Without it, organisations risk losing control and accumulating an unmanageable sprawl of costly, ungoverned cloud services.

Network considerations are often overlooked in cloud strategies, leading to performance issues and poor user experience later. Investing in thorough planning and design from the outset pays significant dividends.

2. Cloudification

Adopting cloud-native architectures is the clearest path to greater business agility and faster time to market. These applications are purpose-built to run in the cloud and fully exploit its advantages, including elastic scalability, high availability, and self-healing capabilities. Legacy applications can also be modernised using cloud-native technologies to avoid obsolescence.

From a financial perspective, these approaches unlock the true value of cloud by enabling faster code development, quicker service iteration, and serverless computing—dramatically shortening deployment timelines.

Cloud-native solutions also perform effectively in multicloud environments, leveraging operational capabilities across diverse platforms. Linking costs directly to business outcomes—much like agile operations—helps maintain financial discipline. Cost tagging on every architectural component, combined with predictive tools, enables continuous cost compliance and forward visibility for finance teams.

Because cloud-native services embed codification of provisioning and cost controls, ongoing optimisation becomes an integrated part of the architecture rather than a manual or reactive task. Achieving this cross-architecture visibility requires integrator capabilities and operational expertise beyond siloed thinking.

In line with a culture of digital innovation, failures should be identified quickly, lessons learned rapidly, and adjustments made immediately. Cloud-native building blocks are specifically designed to support this mindset.

Moving to cloud-native requires commitment to prioritising cloud-based applications and a willingness to explore fundamentally new delivery models. It often demands new skill sets—either hired or developed internally—and may reshape vendor relationships. Aligning cloud-native adoption with clear business objectives is essential to avoid purely IT-driven goals that lack strategic impact.

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3. Security

Different generations of cloud demand different security approaches. Cloud-native environments require the most rigorous model, with security designed to support development rather than constrain it. This shift places organisations in a world of full-stack codification and GitOps.

While it is tempting to assume cloud security can be fully delegated to the infrastructure provider, enterprises must still understand and mitigate remaining risks. A common mistake is operating in the cloud before security systems and processes are fully in place.

Although components provided by cloud infrastructure vendors are secure by design, integrating them into a modern platform requires the expertise of a cloud integrator to ensure proper configuration management and integration security.

Human error remains a leading cause of breaches. Employees may store data in the cloud without passwords, lose track of it, or turn to shadow IT to meet urgent deadlines. Cloud itself is not inherently less secure, but it requires the right controls. Data is data—whether on-premises or in the cloud—and attackers target applications and information regardless of location.

Security must be addressed from the beginning, ideally when designing landing zones, CI/CD pipelines, or continuous compliance frameworks. It is a shared responsibility, and organisations should clearly understand which elements fall to the provider and which remain their own. Engaging a managed service provider (MSP) can help clarify these boundaries.

Implementing zero-trust principles within cloud infrastructure is essential. Best-practice security should be embedded in DevOps processes and fed into ongoing monitoring and maintenance. Avoiding overly rigid security gates that slow feature releases is equally important. Instead, opportunities to automate security—such as code review testing—should be leveraged to enable faster, more efficient, and more secure delivery.

A Vision for the Cloud

The cloud has firmly established itself as a core business enabler. IDG estimates that 92% of an organisation’s total IT environment now resides at least partially in the cloud. Consequently, cloud strategy is no longer solely an IT concern—it is an organisation-wide priority.

Getting cloud transformation right requires sustained effort. Enterprises must recognise that successful change is iterative. Making sound early decisions and building the capacity to absorb and adapt to change significantly reduces risk, keeping the business agile and competitive.

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