Cloud native, API first approach separates the best from the rest

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Cloud native and API first

Even in today’s digital world, it can be challenging for business leaders to make the case for disrupting business as usual to upgrade legacy tech platforms - particularly if those platforms are critical to a company’s operations.

Transcript

Rohit Antao, Partner, Cloud & Digital Lead, PwC Australia

Our latest research reveals that Australia's top performing companies really focus on 11 critical factors. Amongst these factors, the top 20% of these companies have made the transition to a cloud native platform, and follow an API first strategy. 

Now, while many organisations strive to go down this path and have this aspiration, few succeed. Many of them struggle with the organisational, technical, and strategic hurdles that get in the way of success. 

Top performing companies in Australia are more likely to have transitioned their old legacy systems to cloud native systems. They are 1.3 times more likely to leverage APIs to connect internally to data and systems across the organisation. And they are 1.2 times more likely to leverage APIs to connect to partner systems and data.  

So what do top performers get right? 

In our view, three things. 

They take a business-centric view to defining the API strategy. They look at the cloud as more than just a cost play but to drive innovation. And number three, is that they uplift their operating model and the talent required to be successful in this transition.

Organisations that have made this transition enjoy several benefits. A faster time to market, a better employee and customer experience, a more nimble and agile core, and most importantly, embedded cybersecurity.

Robert di Pietro, Partner, Cybersecurity & Digital Trust Lead, PwC Australia

Australia’s top performing companies see cybersecurity as an enabler. Cybersecurity helps organisations move faster. Just like brakes on a Formula One car help it to achieve higher speeds, but safely, so too–is cybersecurity. It is not just a risk to be managed. Cybersecurity can be a catalyst for trust. It underpins quality, integrity, and reliability. 

Top performing companies are embedding cybersecurity into their cloud platforms and APIs, leveraging concepts such as zero trust architecture, security by design, and privacy by design. 

And importantly, they’re embedding these principles early in their transformation agenda. It can be really difficult and costly to bolt on cybersecurity later in the journey.

There are several advantages to this early adoption, and these include reduced cost, stronger preventative controls to ensure that your cybersecurity defenses are actually preventing threats before they occur, better compliance outcomes which is critical at a time when the regulatory and legislative landscape is evolving quite quickly, and a workforce culture that is more cyber savvy. 

No matter where you are on your cybersecurity journey, by reducing complexity and embedding key cybersecurity principles early in your transformation journey, will ensure that you achieve safer, more digitally secure, and sustainable outcomes for your organisation and your customer.